Friday, July 14th 2023
Intel N100 Quad E-Core Gaming Performance Assessed
Team Pandory has tested the gaming potential of an Intel Alder-Lake-N SoC—not many outlets have bothered to give the N100 much coverage in this aspect, since the chip's makeup is E-core only and it only offers single-channel memory support. Team Blue has emphasized power efficiency rather than raw performance with its super low budget 2022 successor to old Pentium and Celeron processor product lines. The utilization of modern Gracemount CPU cores does it some favors—notably granting L3 cache support, but the chip has been designed with entry-level productivity in mind.
Naturally, in-game testing focuses attention on the N100's integrated GPU, based on Team Blue's Xe-LP architecture—it features 24 execution units (EUs), support for AV1 decode capabilities, and 8K 60 FPS video playback. Arc Alchemist offers roughly double the performance when compared to the Xe-LP iGPU, so we are not expecting a big "wow factor" to be delivered by the plucky Alder-Lake-N SoC (6 W TDP). Team Pandory benchmarked a laptop sporting a single stick of 8 GB DDR5 RAM and the N100 quad E-core CPU (capable of 3.4 GHz turbo boosting), with 6 MB of L3 cache. The ultra portable device was able to hit 60 FPS in a couple of older games, but the majority of tested titles ran at 20 to 30 20 FPS (on average). Graphics settings were universally set to minimum, with a resolution of 1280 x 720 (720p) across ten games: CS:GO, Dota 2, Forza Horizon 4, Genshin Impact, GTA V, Grid Autosport, Minecraft, Resident Evil 5, Skyrim, and Sleeping Dogs.
Team Pandory stated: "We tested 10 Windows games using the Chuwi Gemibook XPRO Laptop. The Intel N100 CPU is also used in Beelink Mini PC units, such as the Mini S12."
Specs:
Sources:
Team Pandory YouTube Video, Tom's Hardware, Wccftech
Naturally, in-game testing focuses attention on the N100's integrated GPU, based on Team Blue's Xe-LP architecture—it features 24 execution units (EUs), support for AV1 decode capabilities, and 8K 60 FPS video playback. Arc Alchemist offers roughly double the performance when compared to the Xe-LP iGPU, so we are not expecting a big "wow factor" to be delivered by the plucky Alder-Lake-N SoC (6 W TDP). Team Pandory benchmarked a laptop sporting a single stick of 8 GB DDR5 RAM and the N100 quad E-core CPU (capable of 3.4 GHz turbo boosting), with 6 MB of L3 cache. The ultra portable device was able to hit 60 FPS in a couple of older games, but the majority of tested titles ran at 20 to 30 20 FPS (on average). Graphics settings were universally set to minimum, with a resolution of 1280 x 720 (720p) across ten games: CS:GO, Dota 2, Forza Horizon 4, Genshin Impact, GTA V, Grid Autosport, Minecraft, Resident Evil 5, Skyrim, and Sleeping Dogs.
Specs:
- CPU: Intel N100 Processor
- RAM: 8 GB Of DDR5 Single Channel
- GPU: Intel UHD Graphics Xe 24 EUs @ 750 MHz
- OS: Windows 11 HOME 64-bit
12 Comments on Intel N100 Quad E-Core Gaming Performance Assessed
I thought it weird when I saw all the boards only offering single channel
VIA used to be the king of 'efficiency, at any performance-cost'.
Would be neat to see some of these ultra low power chips compared to top-end CPUs of several generations back.
E-cores compare well to Skylake so no problems there combined with a decent SSD. Stacks up pretty well against the Mendocino Athlons; maybe not GPU-wise, but if you handicap the RAM equally badly on Mendocino, who knows?
Remember: E-cores are not energy efficient for constant loads, they are die space efficient.