At a quick glance
i7 > i5
Intel GPU < Nvidia GPU
SSD > HDD
It all depends on the use. Intel graphics are improving, but they would want to. They sourced AMD gpus at one stage. SSDs are noticably faster, as is 4Ghz vs 3.2 Ghz. I don't see number of cores, bus speed on your machine, etc. Computationally, the NUC is superior. I however would not be ashamed of owning your box!
My first thought would be to put an i7 in the hole where the i5 is now, and maybe buy an SSD instead of buying new. I also pay huge attention to wafer fab size. That's the hardware limitation on speed, because it affects internal power consumption and limits speed. Try imagining a tap filling a bucket of water; That's a great simplification of electronics charging the input capacitance of the next stage. Now if you swap the bucket for a teacup, it's going to fill faster, and use less water. So you can clock it faster. If you swap the teacup for an eggcup, it's faster again, less water, etc.
They can get down to about 5nm (NanoMetres) fab size before they hit several huge intractable problems in physics. Intel are getting online with a 7nm fab. I think Samsung has 11nm, AMD use Samsung fab. Put that beside the 2 micrometre (=2000nm!) we had when chips first came out in 1970 and 5 Mhz was too much for them. This quote is from that time
Code:
But what...is it good for? -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
Would low/medium spec modern NUC far outperform my 5 yo Desktop?
