The Intel NUC12 Extreme Dragon Canyon Preview: Desktop Alder Lake Impresses in SFF Avatar

System Performance

Our updated test suite for Windows 11-based SFF systems carries over some of the standard benchmarks we have been using over the last several years, including UL's PCMark and BAPCo's SYSmark. Starting this year, we are also including BAPCo's CrossMark multi-platform benchmarking tool.

UL Benchmark: PCMark 10

PCMark is a full-system benchmark which highlights CPU performance, but also includes the GPU, memory, and storage as factors in the outcome depending on the test being performed.

All workloads see a significant upgrade in scores as we move from Tiger Lake to Alder Lake in two machines with essentially identical thermal designs.

BAPCo SYSmark 25

BAPCo's SYSmark 25 replays traditional business workloads in a tightly controlled environment for consistent reproducibility. Energy measurement is also done to determine efficiency of the PC under test.

The Dragon Canyon NUC delivers significantly better performance at the cost of increased energy consumption - a 13% increase in scores for a 24% increase in energy consumption.

BAPCo CrossMark 1.0.1.86

BAPCo's CrossMark aims to simplify benchmark processing while still delivering scores that roughly tally with SYSmark. The main advantage is the cross-platform nature of the tool - allowing it to be run on smartphones and tablets as well.

The improvements seen in SYSmark 25 translate to CrossMark also, as expected.

Rendering: Cinebench R23

The Cinebench rendering benchmark can operate in two modes - single-threaded and multi-threaded.

The upgrade in the single-threaded performance is quite welcome, given that both processors carry similar TDPs and clocks. On the multi-threaded front, the presence of 24 threads gives the Dragon Canyon a distinct advantage over the 16 threads in the Beast Canyon NUC.

Transcoding: Handbrake 1.5.1

Handbrake is one of the most user-friendly open source transcoding front-ends in the market. It allows users to opt for either software-based higher quality processing or hardware-based fast processing in their transcoding jobs. Our new test suite uses the 'Tears of Steel' 4K AVC video as input and transcodes it with a quality setting of 19 to create a 720p AVC stream and a 1080p HEVC stream.

Hardware transcoding for HEVC is a lot faster than software (when compared to AVC in the same modes). Between Tiger Lake and Alder Lake, we see improvements in the transcoding rates across the board in the latter.

Archiving: 7-Zip 21.7

The 7-Zip benchmark is carried over from our previous test suite with an update to the latest version of the open source compression / decompression software.

The higher number of threads in Alder Lake provides it with a distinct advantage in this multi-threading friendly benchmark.

Web Browsing: JetStream and Speedometer

Web browser-based workloads have emerged as a major component of the typical home and business PC usage scenarios. We are carrying over the browser-focused benchmarks from the WebKit developers used in our notebook reviews. Hosted at BrowserBench, JetStream 2.0 benchmarks JavaScript and WebAssembly performance, while Speedometer measures web application responsiveness. We also process MotionMark, but the confidence level of the results vary as much as ±35%.

Other than MotionMark, we see a significant uptick in performance for all browsers across all benchmarks when moving from Tiger Lake to Alder Lake.

Application Startup: GIMP 2.10.30

A new addition to our SFF test suite is AppTimer - a benchmark that loads up a program and determines how long it takes for it to accept user inputs. We use GIMP 2.10.30 with a 50MB multi-layered xcf file as input. What we test here is the first run as well as the cached run - normally on the first time a user loads the GIMP package from a fresh install, the system has to configure a few dozen files that remain optimized on subsequent opening. For our test we delete those configured optimized files in order to force a ‘fresh load’ every second time the software is run. As it turns out, GIMP does optimizations for every CPU thread in the system, which requires that higher thread-count processors take a lot longer to run. So the test runs quick on systems with fewer threads, however fast cores are also needed.

Despite more cores in Dragon Canyon, their fast nature helps in achieving parity for first load times. However, the Beast Canyon enjoys a slight edge in the cache start.