Wednesday, January 17th 2024
Intel 300 CPU Tested, a Budget Dual Core "14th Gen" Option
A conglomerate of Japanese hardware outlets has tested Intel's latest batch of Raptor Lake Refresh desktop processors—their findings arrived in the form of a YouTube video (viewable below). The lowly Intel 300 CPU was sampled as part of PAD's lab tests—this 14th generation model serves as a natural successor to Team Blue's Pentium Gold G7400 processor. Pentium and Celeron brands were retired in the "essential product space" in 2022, along with the introduction of a replacement: simple "Intel Processor" in a light blue color scheme.
Expectations are not set very high for a two-core, 4-thread CPU in modern times—some news outlets believe that this an Alder Lake part (AKA a frequency tweaked Pentium Gold G7400), despite being launched alongside many Raptor Lake Refresh parts. The Intel 300 sports two Raptor Cove P-cores with hyper-threading capabilities—base performance is set at 3.9 GHz, with no provisions for boosting above that figure. The rest of its basic specs consist of a 46 W TDP and 6 MB of L3 cache (3 MB on each core). Team Blue's Core i3-14100 quad core CPU sits just above the 300 in the latest batch of 14th Gen—naturally, the former pulls ahead of the latter in synthetic benchmarks. PC Watch and Co. tests present a maximum 55% multi-core performance gap between the two lower end options, although the single-threaded difference was measured 13% (in Cinebench).
An analysis of gaming benchmarks labeled the i3-14100 as a budget clear winner—Tom's Hardware summarized the brutal scenario: "not a surprising result considering it has twice the cores, twice the cache, and a frequency about 20% higher. Even for gamers only targeting 60 FPS, the 14100 provides an objectively better gaming experience as its 1% low framerate was always at least 60 FPS, which means the framerate virtually never dropped below 60 FPS. By contrast, the 300 had 1% low framerates significantly lower than 60 FPS in the two games."
PC Watch: "Many new models with improved cost performance have been added to Intel's latest CPU, Core processor (14th generation). We will evaluate these models, including the new entry model Intel 300 that replaces the Pentium/Celeron."
About "PAD" channel
This is a specialized channel for PC hardware and related information jointly brought to you by PC Watch, AKIBA PC Hotline!, and DOS/V POWER REPORT.
Sources:
PAD YouTube Vid, VideoCardz, Tom's Hardware, Wccftech
Expectations are not set very high for a two-core, 4-thread CPU in modern times—some news outlets believe that this an Alder Lake part (AKA a frequency tweaked Pentium Gold G7400), despite being launched alongside many Raptor Lake Refresh parts. The Intel 300 sports two Raptor Cove P-cores with hyper-threading capabilities—base performance is set at 3.9 GHz, with no provisions for boosting above that figure. The rest of its basic specs consist of a 46 W TDP and 6 MB of L3 cache (3 MB on each core). Team Blue's Core i3-14100 quad core CPU sits just above the 300 in the latest batch of 14th Gen—naturally, the former pulls ahead of the latter in synthetic benchmarks. PC Watch and Co. tests present a maximum 55% multi-core performance gap between the two lower end options, although the single-threaded difference was measured 13% (in Cinebench).
PC Watch: "Many new models with improved cost performance have been added to Intel's latest CPU, Core processor (14th generation). We will evaluate these models, including the new entry model Intel 300 that replaces the Pentium/Celeron."
About "PAD" channel
This is a specialized channel for PC hardware and related information jointly brought to you by PC Watch, AKIBA PC Hotline!, and DOS/V POWER REPORT.
39 Comments on Intel 300 CPU Tested, a Budget Dual Core "14th Gen" Option
There are people who choose to live with ultra low power laptops, which I find much harder to believe.
There are plenty of uses for this, especially for users who only need like a Linux distro to run spreadsheets, you can get a decent experience when you don't load it up with bloatdware. Or like a cheap "grandma PC". Or a PC to only run really old games in emulators, you don't need 16 cores to emulate C64, SNES or MS-DOS you know. ;)
The only thing I would use something like this for would be software validation, but that's really niche.
I mean i am only selling single core cpu's with out ht/smt of cause. Only the very stupidly overpriced... Eh i mean the extremely resnable priced extreme core edition i give my costumers the choise of adding 1 more Thread to the cpu. To unlock it, you off cause have to pay ekstra to enable it via code. You could call it a payed cpu DLC.
Do you need two engines in your car? No
Then you neither need 2 or more cores in your pc. Its pretty logical.
More serious, i think there are people out there that have only a need for for dual core cpu. There people that only use there pc for some youtube and word typing and the general internet surfing. Or simply the most poor people can maybe only barely afford a cpu like this. There are people out there having a hard time economic, so they need to spend as little as possible on pc. So i think there still a need for a dirt cheap dual core cpu, all throw the need is deminishing for each year.
Some of the Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs are made on the second of these Alder Lake dies. Features that confirm this are 1.25 Mb L2 per P core and 2 Mb L2 for each cluster of E cores. CPUs made using the Raptor Lake die have 2Mb L2 per P core and 4Mb L2 for each cluster of E cores. For example the i5 14500 is Alder Lake based but the i5 14600K is made using the Raptor Lake die.
First Alder P cores only (how many?)
Second 8+8 Alder
Third 8+16 Raptor?
Goodjob pat
These 2C4T CPUs are atrocious performers, atrocious value and should not exist. Giving Intel 300 the same price and a bit higher clocks but 4 real cores, even if with no HT enabled, would be a good and reasonable thing to do.
edit: N100 also has a better IGP, but only single channel memory to feed it.