Intel E-Core-Only N100 Gaming Benchmarks Emerge

Celeron, Atom and Pentium logos
(Image credit: Intel)

Gaming benchmarks of Intel's new Alder-Lake-N SoCs have been scarce, as these chips only come with E-cores and single-channel memory support. We wouldn't expect most people to even consider it for gaming purposes, but that didn't stop Team Pandory on YouTube from running some tests on the N100. Performance wasn't great, though the power efficiency was surprisingly good, with some (very light) games hitting 60 frames per second with less than 7W of power consumption.

Alder Lake-N was announced early in 2022 as Intel's latest edition of ultra-low power and ultra-low-cost SoCs. The special sauce for these chips special is that they are based entirely on Intel's modern Gracemount CPU cores, which are used as efficiency cores in the company's Alder Lake and Raptor Lake hybrid CPUs. Intel's Gracemount cores are surprisingly powerful for their intended role, featuring L3 cache support, enhanced branch prediction, and more, which Intel claims makes these cores just as powerful as the 6th generation Skylake CPU cores from 2015.

The integrated graphics chip inside these Alder Lake-N chips is reasonably decent, feature 24 Execution Units (EUs) and offering up to a theoretical 8K 60 fps playback support with AV1 decode capabilities via Intel's Xe-LP architecture. The iGPU is still limited to 4K 60 fps output for the display resolution, however. Note also that Xe-LP is not the same as Arc Alchemist, which does feature AV1 encoding support and about double the performance. Still, it might be serviceable for some light gaming.

Team Pandory shows how Intel's little Alder Lake-N chips — specifically the N100 — handle various games at minimum settings and a 1280x720 (720p) resolution. The little quad-core CPU, with 6MB of L3 cache and a 3.4 GHz turbo, was able to hit 60 fps in a few titles, but overall most of the titles ran at a paltry 30 to 20 fps on average.

The YouTuber tested 10 games in all, including Genshin Impact, Dota 2, Grid Autosport, GTA V, Minecraft, Resident Evil 5, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, CS:GO, and Forza Horizon 4. In three of those titles, specifically CS:GO, Grid Autosport, and Resident Evil 5, the N100 achieved 60 fps, and in the case of Resident Evil 5, it ran in the mid-70s in most areas. Dota 2 also managed an acceptable 40 fps. Sadly, the rest of the group ran at 30 fps or less, with some games dipping into the low 20 fps range. The latter are effectively unplayable on the N100.

The N100's includes four Gracemount cores clocked at up to 3.4 GHz turbo, with 6MB of L3 cache and a 6W TDP that is non-configurable. Memory maxes out at 16GB of capacity, and the testing used a single 8GB stick of DDR5 memory. (These chips only have a single memory channel, so this config doesn't restrict GPU performance.) The UHD Graphics feature the Xe-LP architecture with 24 EUs and a maximum frequency of 750 MHz — compare that to faster desktop parts like the UHD Graphics 770 in Intel's Core i9-12900K that have 32 EUs and can run at 1550 MHz.

Even though Intel's little N100 didn't achieve superb gaming performance, the performance per watt is pretty impressive coming from an entry-level design. The N100 is rated at just 6W of power consumption for the whole chip, making the chip's performance per watt exceptionally good. That's all relative, of course, as most gaming laptops would feature significantly more graphics horsepower.

The N100's performance-per-watt gaming advantage obviously isn't going to be a feature that drives sales, as the performance isn't anywhere near playable for most gamers. But Alder Lake-N was never designed as a gaming platform in the first place, instead going after lower-level tasks like web browsing, video playback, and basic office work.

But it is interesting to see what Intel's most-power efficient SoC platform is capable of. If it wanted to, Intel could potentially put together a handheld gaming SoC competitor to rival the best handheld gaming SoCs from AMD, including the Ryzen Z1 series and the Steam Deck's custom Van Gogh APU. Will that ever happen? Never say never... but it's not likely to occur any time soon.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • tamalero
    I'd love to get a more general benchmark. Gaming obviously isnt the goal!

    For example, those could work great as home server/router or NAS.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    I'm sure if paired with a reasonably decent GPU, it would've performed better.
    Reply
  • usertests
    ETA Prime:

    HPGeXF-yKqwView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPGeXF-yKqw
    Q5_sBF2d9tIView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5_sBF2d9tI
    (both videos contain incorrect dual-channel hopium)

    hotaru.hino said:
    I'm sure if paired with a reasonably decent GPU, it would've performed better.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder_Lake#Alder_Lake-N
    N97 is clocked faster, for whatever reason, while the N200, i3-N300, and i3-N305 have the full 32 execution units instead of 24 EUs in N100.

    I think the real problem is that all of Alder Lake-N is limited to single-channel memory, so even though LPDDR5/DDR5 can be used, the benefits over Jasper Lake are muted or non-existent. It would be even worse for any models using DDR4-3200 or slower.

    If we see similar lineups with Crestmont and future E-cores, I hope they will get better treatment and be cheaper (8-core N300/N305 prices are stupid high last time I checked, even though this is supposed to be a cheap, small die).

    These SoCs have direct competition in the form of AMD's Mendocino. Too bad those aren't going into SBCs.

    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Pentium-Silver-N6005-Processor-Benchmarks-and-Specs.514831.0.html
    Reply
  • bit_user
    First, let's be clear about something: these have been shipping for several months, at least. This isn't one of those articles reporting on leaked benchmarks of a pre-launch product. Toms could've reviewed one, but the mini-PC market has been traditionally under-served by the reviews here.

    Second, the SoC has a total of 9 PCIe 3.0 lanes. So, it'd really interesting if there were a N100 board with an open-ended x4 slot. The cores in these things are Skylake-tier, which means they should be a viable option for 1080p gaming, when paired with a dGPU like RX 6400 or A380. There are even 8-core versions, in the N300 and N305.

    Finally...

    a 6W TDP that is non-configurable
    I don't believe it. I measured a "10 W" Gimini Lake R using up to 34 W, at the wall. All that was plugged into it was Ethernet, HDMI, a bootable USB stick, and 2x DDR4 DIMMs. So, most of that was getting burned by the SoC, itself.

    While not being officially advertised as configurable, these are primarily laptop SoCs and you bet Intel provided some way for device makers to constrain them for thermal and power reasons.


    Thanks for reporting on this, but please do try to get one or more of these in-house, for some proper testing. It would be even better if you could find one on a mini-ITX board with an x4 slot to test with a dGPU.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    usertests said:
    I think the real problem is that all of Alder Lake-N is limited to single-channel memory, so even though LPDDR5/DDR5 can be used, the benefits over Jasper Lake are muted or non-existent. It would be even worse for any models using DDR4-3200 or slower.
    Yes. Jasper Lake maxed out at 2x DDR4-2400, while Alder Lake-N supports either 1x DDR4-3200 or 1x DDR5-4800. That makes the DDR4 configuration just 2/3rds as fast as Jasper Lake's top config, while the DDR5 option merely achieves parity.

    Meanwhile, not only are the cores and GPU faster, but also you can now get 8 CPU cores. When using the iGPU, I'm sure Alder Lake N can get very bandwidth-starved.

    usertests said:
    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Pentium-Silver-N6005-Processor-Benchmarks-and-Specs.514831.0.html
    Not sure what your point was by adding this. The N6005 is Jasper Lake (previous gen, using Tremont cores), while these are Alder Lake-N (with Gracemont cores).
    Reply
  • HideOut
    How is this a new article? I mean EVERY youtuber has reviewed this. Projecttinyminimicro anyone? THG needs to get some help...
    Reply
  • usertests
    bit_user said:
    Not sure what your point was by adding this. The N6005 is Jasper Lake (previous gen, using Tremont cores), while these are Alder Lake-N (with Gracemont cores).
    Proof to the audience that it has 2 memory channels. It also has a fact that you missed, namely that Jasper Lake supports DDR4/LPDDR4X-2933, not merely DDR4-2400. Further confirmation here:

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/16388/intel-launches-jasper-lake-tremont-atom-cores-for-all
    All the CPUs support dual channel DDR4-2933, as well as LPDDR4X-2933, which is an odd combination as usually the LPDDR4X transfer rate is higher, such as LPDDR4X-3600.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    usertests said:
    It also has a fact that you missed, namely that Jasper Lake supports DDR4/LPDDR4X-2933, not merely DDR4-2400.
    Sorry, it seems I got it mixed up with Gemini Lake-R.
    https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/197304/intel-pentium-silver-j5040-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-20-ghz.html
    Reply
  • Giroro
    I guess I must not have any of the world records for this CPU any more.. I didn't did anything impressive, I was simply the only person to bother running any recorded benchmarks for months.
    These things have been easily available and cheap as dirt for like over half a year. Now mine lives in a chicken coop so I can watch chickens.

    Wish I knew how to sell my YouTube channel so more than like 4 people could have heard about it.
    But sure, these are the people who get coverage, this late.
    YouTube is truly a terrible net-loss to society. I should probably just give up and delete my channels. 5+ figures and two years of investment can't even get a channel monetized. What a waste of life.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    usertests said:
    Proof to the audience that it has 2 memory channels. It also has a fact that you missed, namely that Jasper Lake supports DDR4/LPDDR4X-2933, not merely DDR4-2400. Further confirmation here:

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/16388/intel-launches-jasper-lake-tremont-atom-cores-for-all
    I have a N100. It absolutely does not support dual channel memory.
    Reply