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[jmone]

12 Jan 2022 Update:  JRVR has breathed new life into these aging NUCs as it is far more efficient than madVR.  With JRVR, these NUCs can now play all my content (including high frame rate UHD HDR content) to a 4K Screen when in HDR Passthrough mode.  This is a great achievement.  HDR Tonemapping to SDR will also work on "std" 23.976 UHD BDs. 
=============================
In my previous review of the NUC7, it's UHD video performance to a 4K HDR Display left a lot to be desired when using RedOctober HQ (madVR).  MC recently added a "Performance Mode" that enabled the NUC7 to play most UHD material but the NUC7 still was not able to play UHD Material that had High Frame Rates (eg 50/60fps) without dropping frames.  So how will the newer NUC8 line perform? 

I like the concept of the small form factor PC's for dedicated HTPCs but there are normally compromises that can make them problematic for general HTPC duties.  For reference I've previously done similar reviews for:
- Review : Intel NUC NUC7i5BNH & MC as an HTPC
- Review : Intel NUC NUC6i5SYK & MC as an HTPC
- Review : Intel NUC DN2820 & MC as a Low Cost Media Player
- Review: Intel Compute Stick (2016 Version)
- Review: Clone of Intel Compute Stick (MeeGoPad T01) with MC as Media Player

I again looked for a suitable Intel NUC in the current NUC range from Intel.  I settled on the NUC8I5BEK.  Unfortunately, as it has just been released I did not find any great deals and there was not a lot of model choices available locally.  Thankfully the NUC8I5BEK is available and at the mid point in the NUC Product Range (packaged in the in the smallest form factor with only a M2 SSD slot), it suits me well for a small HTPC.  It has a i5-8259U processor that is 33%+ faster than the i5-7260U in the NUC7.   Also good news the Iris Plus Graphics 655 is 40%+ faster than the 640 GPU in the NUC7.... but how will these big speed bumps go with my HighFrame Rate UHD Material to a 4K HDR Screen?

I've still got the same basic list of desirable for a good HTPC:
- Access and Quality Playback of all my media (Audio and Video)
- Smoothly run MC
- Low Power Usage
- Small and quiet unit
...but don't want to pay big $$$ ?



The NUC8I5BEK the most expensive NUC I have purchased to date and without a sale on at the time and a poor AUD Exchange Rate, I paid a bit over US$400 for the bare bones.  To that you need to add Memory (say $75 for 8GB), and a Drive (say $50 for an 120GB M2 SDD) if you can't re-purpose some parts from other builds.  On top of that, you will need an OS (I grabbed an OEM Win10 Pro Lic for this).  I could have also gone with the larger BEH form factor if you want to use a SSD.

On the surface the specs look good for an HTPC with HDMI 2.0a, IR, Wireless & Wired NW, Bluetooth.  In particular, I was interested to see how it would go with the:
- noise from the fan cooling the i5 CPU and
- Iris™ Plus Graphics 655 handling both 4K/UHD content including high frame rate content (eg 4K/50p & 60p) and HDR.

Install:  I was all ready to do a clean install on my re-purposed M2.SSD from the NUC7 build but the boot sequence was too quick, and the next thing Windows was updating stuff.  Did a couple of rounds of Windows Update and Intel Driver updates and I was all good to go with the exception of manually updating the Realtek Audio Driver and entering in a new Windows Licence Code.  For good measure I also updated the BIOS and GPU drivers to the latest version.

Tweaks: 
- BIOS / Multi Color Front Panel LED (Item 21 in the above Pic):  Thankfully the NUC8 has reversed the (in my view) horrible trend of adding ultra bright blue LEDs!  You can still adjust the front LED in the BIOS but it is far less intrusive than the NUC7 out of the box
- In the BIOS I increased all the iGPU Ram settings to max (but I did not notice any change in performance)
- Custom Video Settings:  If you use MC's display rate changer you may also need to add a 2sec delay to "Wait after change" else the audio render seems to get dropped on the change and MC will then complain that the Audio output is not working.

Preliminary Results:  So far it does not seem all that different performance wise to the NUC7.  It is early days but so far my observations are:
- RO Std:  Works nicely and can playback most content (including UHD) with a couple of exceptions.  With UHD BD the CPU was around 10% and the GPU around 30% with little Fan Noise.  That said, it can not keep up with UHD BD high frame rate content such as (the one and only to date) Billy Lynn that is shot in 60fps.  It did better that the NUC7 with my UHD Camcorder footage shot @ 50fps video (H.264 @ 150mbps) but had a regular stutter every second (looked like frame rate mismatch).  Other media was fine.
- ROHQ/High Performance (madVR): Like with the NUC7, the ROHQ with the High Performance profile worked well for standard UHD BD Material including processing of HDR (using Dumb Mode) out to a UHD TV.  Fan noise did ramp up and I saw MC consuming 16% CPU but 75% GPU so ROHQ was giving the little NUC iGPU a hammering.  What it can not do without dropping frames is any media with 50 / 59.94 fps.  It just can not keep up.  Fixed - There also seems to be an issue when using BD Menu Mode with UHD BD content and the NUC8 can not keep up (see post below).
- Heat & Noise:  When you are pushing the NUC8, you can certainly hear the fan from 1m away and it has a bit of a whine to it I did not notice with the NUC7.  I'm not sure if it is the smaller case on my NUC8.  It is also much hotter (see pic) and hence why the fan ramps up.  I also see in the BIOS there is a bunch of fan profile settings to play with but given how much hotter it is (see pic) I'm not sure that changing the fan profile will help when under load. 

Code: [Select]

=== Running Benchmarks (please do not interrupt) ===

Running 'Math' benchmark...
    Single-threaded integer math... 4.063 seconds
    Single-threaded floating point math... 2.809 seconds
    Multi-threaded integer math... 1.372 seconds
    Multi-threaded mixed math... 0.898 seconds
Score: 2078

Running 'Image' benchmark...
    Image creation / destruction... 0.530 seconds
    Flood filling... 0.466 seconds
    Direct copying... 0.319 seconds
    Small renders... 0.937 seconds
    Bilinear rendering... 0.726 seconds
    Bicubic rendering... 0.422 seconds
Score: 6472

Running 'Database' benchmark...
    Create database... 0.144 seconds
    Populate database... 0.983 seconds
    Save database... 0.317 seconds
    Reload database... 0.067 seconds
    Search database... 1.213 seconds
    Sort database... 0.621 seconds
    Group database... 0.614 seconds
Score: 5431

JRMark (version 24.0.59 64 bit): 4661
Conclusion:  Initial conclusions is the NUC8 is still hit and miss if you want an HTPC connected to your 4K Display.  While on paper it is a lot more powerful from the NUC7 and it certainly outputs far more heat (and noise), it still does not have the horse power to render some content.  In particular with ROHQ it was fine with "Movie" (23.976fps) content, but will struggle to play higher frame rates without dropping frames.  I'm thinking to get the best out of this Box, I may need to use Zone Switch to run ROHQ for Movies (eg 23.976fps) to get HDR processing and RO Std for Video (eg 50 / 59.94 fps).  This does surprise me as with the ROHQ Performance Profile I would have thought it would be fine with Video style content but it really does struggle. 

[jmone]

One for Hendrik - I noticed a difference between BD Title Playback and BD Menu Mode on dropping frames with UHD content.  It seems when in BD Menu Mode, the Chroma Scaling is Bilinear not DXVA (see attached).

Edit: Digging into it a bit more I see the following utilisation:
- RO HQ & Menus : MC uses 96% CPU / 10% GPU and drops frames (as per the pic) : Its CPU Bound.
- RO HQ & Title Playback : MC uses 20% CPU / 75% GPU and it plays fine (as per the pic)

As a comparison with RQ Std:
- RO STD & Menus : MC uses 80% CPU / 25% GPU but plays fine (just)
- RO STD & Title Playback : MC uses 8% CPU / 30% GPU but it plays fine

[jmone]

I'm having more luck with RO STD than RO HQ / High Performance playing videos above 23.976 without dropping frames scaling to a 4K TV.  I would have thought the NUC8 would have been better in this regard but I've failed (so far) to find a madVR combo of settings to get the total render time under the required vsync.  It looks like a compromise HTPC where you could use Zone Switch to:
- Use ROHQ for "film" so you can get HDR processing with madVR
- Use ROSTD for the other videos.  Even so I still have issues with noticeable dropped frames on 4K Videos (from a GoPro and Canon Camcorder).

[tyler69]

Thank you jmone. Could you also please comment on upscaling/downscaling (chroma?) 4k<->1080p?

[jmone]

It seems to be the upscaling of Chroma @ high frame rates that is a bottleneck on the NUC8 under ROHQ (madVR).  It is OK with 23.976 material but above that it really does struggle.  I've only connected the NUC8 to a 4K display so far, but can report my NUC7's which were driving 1080p displays had a much better time of downscaling Luma from 4K material.  Is there a particular scenario you would like to to test?

[Hendrik]

One for Hendrik - I noticed a difference between BD Title Playback and BD Menu Mode on dropping frames with UHD content.  It seems when in BD Menu Mode, the Chroma Scaling is Bilinear not DXVA (see attached).

Menu playback and DXVA Native is a bit problematic in some cases.

The problem with DXVA Native is that it cannot turn on/off whenever it wants to, it can really only do that at the start right away. But in BD Menu mode, some discs start with some non-video BD-J stuff, in which case the decoder is just fed some fake black frame, so the chance to turn on DXVA Native is missed.

Its on my list to investigate if there is something I can do about that.

[jmone]

Thanks - let me know if there anything you want me to test / try with this box.

[Hendrik]

I built a cheap workaround just now, instead of sending a fake RGB image as the background for BD-J menus, I just encoded an all-black frame in H264 and send that. That way its DXVA compatible and stuff "just works".
Interestingly such an encoded all-black 1920x1080 frame is only 400 something bytes in size, so its easy enough to just include it in the source file.

So that should make it behave quite a bit similar to title playback in the future, I hope.

[tyler69]

It seems to be the upscaling of Chroma @ high frame rates that is a bottleneck on the NUC8 under ROHQ (madVR).  It is OK with 23.976 material but above that it really does struggle.  I've only connected the NUC8 to a 4K display so far, but can report my NUC7's which were driving 1080p displays had a much better time of downscaling Luma from 4K material.  Is there a particular scenario you would like to to test?

Thanks again. Actually, I just checked my settings and the one that I was interested in was "image downscaling". I only have a 1080p display and 4K BluRay material gives me stuttering on anything "better" than using DXVA2 for downscaling ("processing done by custom pixel shader code" is not possible without dropped frames/stutter). I am on a GTX1050Ti btw, so I assume the NUC will struggle even more.

[jmone]

I built a cheap workaround just now, instead of sending a fake RGB image as the background for BD-J menus, I just encoded an all-black frame in H264 and send that. That way its DXVA compatible and stuff "just works".
Interestingly such an encoded all-black 1920x1080 frame is only 400 something bytes in size, so its easy enough to just include it in the source file.

So that should make it behave quite a bit similar to title playback in the future, I hope.

Nice!  I'll test and report back when out.

[jmone]

Thanks again. Actually, I just checked my settings and the one that I was interested in was "image downscaling". I only have a 1080p display and 4K BluRay material gives me stuttering on anything "better" than using DXVA2 for downscaling ("processing done by custom pixel shader code" is not possible without dropped frames/stutter). I am on a GTX1050Ti btw, so I assume the NUC will struggle even more.

Gotcha - I'll test and let you know what it can do.  This is how I'm using, and why I got my NUC7 as earlier models could not play UHD material at all (no full HEVC decoding) even to a 1080p screen.

[jmone]

The NUC8 killed it when playing to a 1080p display with ROHQ and the Performance Profile for std UHD BD including HDR processing!   Looked good and the only thing it struggled with was the UHD BD @ 59.94fps (Billy Lynn).  It could also play my other UHD content including my Camcorder footage.  Then I tried upping ROHQ setting to Balanced and it would play all my UHD BD   ... minus (obviously) Billy Lynn but also my UHD Camcorder footage without dripping frames.

[jmone]

I built a cheap workaround just now, instead of sending a fake RGB image as the background for BD-J menus, I just encoded an all-black frame in H264 and send that. That way its DXVA compatible and stuff "just works".
Interestingly such an encoded all-black 1920x1080 frame is only 400 something bytes in size, so its easy enough to just include it in the source file.

So that should make it behave quite a bit similar to title playback in the future, I hope.

Retested with 24.0.61 and thanks that now seems to work just fine

[jmone]

So now the only really disappointing thing with this NUC8 using ROHQ is I can not get 50/60 material (such as BD Interlaced content like TV Shows, Concerts etc) playing without dropping frames when outputting to a 4K Screen.  I'm out of ideas to try.

[Hendrik]

You could use half-rate deinterlacing, that might still be better then lagging playback.

[jmone]

Thanks - that does help on some material. 

Running through various clips again, if really is the FPS that gives the issue over format or resolution when playing to a 4K screen.  Here is what works and does not with the ROHQ High Performance Profile so far:

Works
23.976 - "Film" Movies
25 -  PAL Content
29.97 - NTSC Content
50i - Interlaced PAL Content


Stutters
50 - PAL High Frame Rate Camcorder
59.94i (note: enabling half rate deinterlacing makes this work which I guess makes it 29.94) - NTSC Interlaced Content
59.94 - NSTC High Frame Rate Camcorder or the Billy Lynn UHD-BD

Obviously as the Frame Rate goes up the required VSYNC goes down but he process time required goes up. 

[Manfred]

Great Review .-)

But the result is not very promising. Same seems for the AMD APU.

I have a lot of bd concerts all 29i. THat is a must.

So my conclusion is to have an NVIDIA GPU internal or as eGPU.

[jmone]

Here is a good compromise using MC's Display Rate changing (see attached) to change the resolution of all higher frame rates to 1080p.  This way all my content (bar Billy Lynn) plays without dropping frames and they look good + you still get madVR processing and HDR support for Film material.  Given most HFR material is still only in 1080 (or lower) then madVR is still doing the processing on this to 1080 RGB and the TV is then scaling to 4K.  The only exception for me is the UHD 50fps Camcorder footage as Chroma is being downscalled by madVR to 1080).  Still it looks fine

[Hendrik]

You would be screwed with 25p PAL material though. Not that this is very common. Do they make UK TV shows in 4K?

[jmone]

   Good on you!  I was just at the shops looking at UHD discs and there was Doctor Who in HDR UHD BD.... Now I'm wondering what frame rate it is as I did not buy it!!!  Anyway, so I just tested a 4K 25fps Camcorder Sample clip (very common for 4K camcorders in PAL markets) and it plays fine without dropping frames @ 4K.  So does this mean you will now split the 25/50, 29.97/59.94, and 30/60 Display Settings into one for each?

Edit - Reports suggest it's a PAL-Speed Down jobbie to 23.976  like other BBC World Releases on UHD...

[jmone]

Tested the NUC's Audio Output using the Windows Sound System Properties. 

Not all combinations of Bitdepths, Sample Rates and Channel Counts worked over HDMI.  The ones marked in Yellow would "Play" and the AVR would correctly report the details of the stream being received but there was no sound.  Unless there is a fix or another workaround, you will need to use MC's DSP to sample unsupported Sample Rates, something like:
- 44.1 --> 48KHz
- 88.2 --> 96Khz
- 176.2 --> 192KHz

[wer]

Fantastic info.  Thank you so much for going to the trouble of doing this.

And so speedy too! 

[jmone]

Just on update regarding JRVR.  In short it works, and works well using
- HDR Passthrough up to an including UHD HDR HFR (50 and 59.94fps)
- HDR Tonemapping for "std" UHD HDR (eg 23.976fps) but will drop frames on HFR material

Overall JRVR has made these NUCs a viable entry level HTPC option for playing HDR UHD material in 2022.

[drmimosa]

Just on update regarding JRVR.  In short it works, and works well using
- HDR Passthrough up to an including UHD HDR HFR (50 and 59.94fps)
- HDR Tonemapping for "std" UHD HDR (eg 23.976fps) but will drop frames on HFR material

Overall JRVR has made these NUCs a viable entry level HTPC option for playing HDR UHD material in 2022.

jmone, sorry for the dead-thread-bump but I have a question, and you are the reigning expert on NUC's, the Nuc-spert? (  ...)

I just picked up a NUC8I5BEK on ebay, and I'm giving it a go with JRVR. All of my video content is DVD 720x480, and I need to upsample it to a 1080p Samsung TV via HDMI (old TV, probably 2014 or so). I'm running MC 30.0.93 on a Linux machine

At the performance preset, I'm getting tons of what I think is called screen tearing (chin moves slower than the rest of the face, jumping back in a straight line, etc). The only way I could get better performance was to crank up the upscaling settings to Jinc, Scale in Sigmoidal Light, Super REs Enhancement RAVU.

But then I am getting a few dropped frames and a ton of repeated frames, plus I have to manually adjust the audio sync by 200ms or so.

I checked and unchecked Hardware accelerate video when possible and no visible change - reading the MC31 notes I think that may be in the works for Linux JRVR.

Do you have a suggestion for the optimal settings to get good 720=>1080p upscaling on this device?

[jmone]

You got to go the other way with the settings to get the render times under 16ms for 60fps material.  Start with:
- HW Accelerate Video: ON
- JRVR: Performance Preset
- JRVR Advanced Options: Check "Allow HW decoder direct rendering on mismatched size"

[Hendrik]

If you get tearing on Linux you'll likely want to check your X11 and/or compositor settings to ensure VSYNC is turned on.

[drmimosa]

VSYNC was the issue, thanks!

Posting in case this helps others:

I had swapped in a drive to the NUC running the Lubuntu Distro (Uses LXDE and Openbox useful for previous, older hardware). Didn't want to contend with a fresh install of Debian because I had a lot of customizations, and OS drive booted on NUC just fine.

To fix tearing:

Compton compositor had to be manually enabled.

I then enabled VSYNC by adding this to ~/.config/compton.conf

Code: [Select]

backend = "glx";
paint-on-overlay = true;
glx-no-stencil = true;
vsync = "opengl-swc";
I also had to follow these instructions to fix a white screen on Theater View, thanks to this thread:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,135232.msg939257.html#msg939257

https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-upgrade-mesa-drivers-on-ubuntu-linux/

@jmone, I stil get a few (half dozen) dropped frames and repeated frames, but I can't really tell because the picture looks right to my eye now that tearing is gone.

Thanks again for the help, everything is running great now.

[jmone]

Glad you got it working (I've no idea on Linux!).  FWIW, anytime that "1/Display Hz > ms ave (under Performace stats)" you are going to get issues with dropped/repeated frames as it is showing that the GPU render times are just not fast enough. 

[Z0001]

Hello all

Has anyone got first hand experience of Intel's nuc 13 units? i3 or i5??

Wanting for very compact, very quiet behind the TV or in a cupboard video machine. Blu ray and upscaling DVD. Video to 4k 75" TV. Connected to multi bay HDD enclosure by usb4 for JABOD.

Really keen what people think on these.

Z

[jmone]

If you have not read my review of the 12th Gen NUC check it out - https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,134761.0.html

I don't expect the 13th gen to be that different from a HTPC POV as it seems to have the same HDMI 2.1 TMDS Iris XE 80EU (for the i5) and 96EU iGPU (for the i7).  Don't get the i3 as it has a much weaker iGPU.  The "CPU" side is 10% faster but that does not matter as much for HTPC use.  You can probably get the NUC12Pro cheaper now?  Also check out the 2nd post in the NUC12Pro thread regarding HDMI 2.1 TMDS.... it's not what you may think.

Edit:  FWIW - I've seen one report that the i5-1340p has a higher boost clock than the 1240p, but then claimed the same TFLOPS for both.

[Z0001]

Hi

Would I get similar results to a gen12 or 13 nuc from the integrated graphics on an Intel gen13 desktop CPU? No additional graphics card. This may help me repurpose an existing enclosure

Thanks

[jmone]

Don't see why not.