Processor Benchmarks
The Intel NUC 13 Pro is often supplied with an i3-1315U, i5-1340P, or i7-1360P processor. Our review machine has the beefier i7-1360P, which has 4 performance cores and 8 efficient cores. The processor is normally found in ultra-light, ultra-thin (actively cooled) laptops. It’s manufactured in the improved Intel 7 process (10nm SuperFin).
There are many processor benchmarks available, so we’ve picked a few noteworthy tests. We begin with Smallpt.
$ phoronix-test-suite benchmark smallpt
Smallpt is a C++ global illumination renderer written in less than 100 lines of code. Global illumination is done via unbiased Monte Carlo path tracing and there is multi-threading support via the OpenMP library.
The NUC again completes the benchmark significantly quicker than either desktop machine. It’s another impressive result.
We’d need to use an Intel i5-12600K to match the NUC’s 8.9 seconds. As this benchmark uses all cores, a CPU with many cores complete the test considerably quicker. For example, an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (16 core, 32 threads) completes the test in 4 seconds.
$ phoronix-test-suite benchmark compress-pbzip2
pbzip2 is a parallel implementation of the bzip2 block-sorting file compressor that uses pthreads and achieves near-linear speedup on SMP machines.
This test measures the time needed to compress a file (a .tar package of the Linux kernel source code) using BZIP2 compression.
The NUC completes this benchmark in 9 seconds, again comfortably beating the two desktop machines.
$ phoronix-test-suite benchmark crafty
Crafty is a chess program directly derived from Cray Blitz, winner of the 1983 and 1986 World Computer Chess Championships.
This is a benchmark looking at the CPU’s performance through a chess benchmark. This benchmark only uses a single core.
The NUC puts in another stellar performance beating the 12th and 10th gen processors by 15% and 60% respectively.
With its result of 12.75 millions of nodes per second the NUC is even faster than the Intel Core i5-12600K by 4% and almost identical to an Intel Core i5-13600K.
All the desktop machines mentioned have two more performance cores than the NUC’s i7-1360P CPU, but the vast majority of users will not be maxing out the NUC’s 4 performance cores in general usage. And the NUC’s processor has 8 efficient cores (the i5-12600K and i5-13600K have 4 and 8 efficient cores respectively; the i5-10400 and i5-12400F have no efficient cores).
$ phoronix-test-suite benchmark x265
This is a simple test of the x265 encoder run on the CPU with a sample 1080p video file. This is the first test where the NUC isn’t the winner although it runs the 12th gen PC very close.
The NUC’s 59.8 frames per second is still commendable — it’s what a AMD Ryzen 5 5600X or Intel Core i9-9900KS scores in this test.
Next page: Page 3 – Memory / Graphics
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / System
Page 2 – Processor
Page 3 – Memory / Graphics
Page 4 – Disk / WiFi
Page 5 – Specifications
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Intel NUC 13 Pro Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Part 1 | Introduction to the series with interrogation of system |
| Part 2 | Benchmarking the Mini PC |
| Part 3 | Installing Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop |
| Part 4 | Configuring Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop |
| Part 5 | Power Consumption |
| Part 6 | P-Cores and E-Cores |
| Part 7 | Gaming |
| Part 8 | Installing and Configuring Manjaro |
| Part 9 | BIOS options |
How does the i7-1360P compare with the latest Ryzen chips e.g. 7600X.
Which chip offers the best performance over cost in a mini-pc?
We don’t have the 7600X chip, but other sites indicate performance is almost identical to the i7-1360P. And factor in the TDP of the 7600X is 105W which needs serious cooling.
Would be great if you could do a comparison with a Ryzen-based mini-pc.
Yes, I’d love to do comparisons with AMD CPUs, but I don’t have any.