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
Are your opinions based on your impressions from old CPUs like Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2?
Or are these based on reviews featuring workloads irrelevant for very basic users?
Intel 300 have two high-performing cores, and for users who only do very light workloads, like basic office work and light surfing, these would be plenty. Most basic applications will not scale significantly beyond two cores, and you can get incredible value from this if combined with a Linux distro and e.g. LibreOffice (which is very light), and don't load it up with other bloatware. For the very basic users, this could offer a decent user experience with a very low price.
(P.s., I'm not suggesting you or any enthusiast buy one ;) )
So, having three or four times the cache and about 600 MHz on top of what this double-core CPU offers I was a little bit offended. Browsing wasn't very smooth, some not-so-well optimised web pages, perfectly capable of running smoothly on a fully enabled i5, were a little bit of stuttery mess on this 2-core nonsense. Gaming was just not here, anything recent is just thrown outta the window. I agree with the point it's enough for those whose most demanding task is launching Google Chrome and watching ASMRs on YouTube, yet that's still very pricey for this level of performance considering what you can get if you pay just 40 dollars more. i3-12100 provides at least 20% single-core performance uplift which is never a bad thing for "basic" users and at least 150% multi-core performance uplift which is useful for everybody.
Buyers save extremely little money and get their performance sliced and diced. 120 dollars for a CPU capable of your "basic" tasks and almost any kinda gaming + some multi-tasking VS 80 dollars for a CPU that's only providing smooth Excel spreadsheet management. No-brainer all things considered. I also dare to remind you those "basic" users virtually never upgrade their PCs so buying a CPU that will become obsolete a decade before they buy a new PC is not ideal. Pentium G4500, for example, became a complete pain train by 2019, yet i3-6100 felt relatively decent up until 2023. Their prices differed a little, their value is night and day. With Intel 300 and i3, this value difference is one order of magnitude bigger and price difference has shrunk even thinner.
There are also embedded options, but both exist.
The TDP seems ridiculously high for such a weak chip. I am guessing the clocks are probably aggressive for the silicon quality.
Intel Processor 300 = confusing
Intel Core Ultra 7 processor 155H = WTF?
How about the following:
GeForce RTX graphics card 4090
Samsung 990 solid state drive Pro
Gigabyte B650 AORUS motherboard Elite
CORSAIR 4000D case AIRFLOW
AOC AGON monitor AG275QXR