Intel's N95 Processor Benchmark Leak: An Entry-Level 2023 CPU

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Earlier this year it transpired that in 2023, Intel intends to cease using its Celeron and Pentium brands for entry-level notebook CPUs. Instead, Intel will use the 'Intel Processor' branding. With 2023 being mere weeks away, it is about time for one of the first Intel Processor-badged CPUs to allegedly get tested. For now take the test results with a pinch of salt until they are verified.

The first Intel Processor product to hit Primate Labs' Geekbench 5 database appears to be the Intel N95 (via @Benchleaks), which seems to be one of the entry-level Alder Lake-N CPUs featuring four Atom-class energy-efficient cores based on the Gracement microarchitecture. The processor features a 1.70 GHz base clock, a 2.80 GHz boost clock, 2MB of L2 cache, and 6MB of L3 cache, based on the entry in the Geekbench database. This is not the first time when an Alder Lake-N CPU gets benchmarked, but this is the first time when we see a quad-core Alder Lake-N. 

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Header Cell - Column 0 Intel N95Core i3-N305Celeron 7305Athlon Gold 7220UCore i3-1210U
General specifications4E, up to 2.80 GHz8E, up to 3.78 GHz1P, 4E, 1.10 GHz2P/4T, up to 3.70 GHz2P, 4E, up to 4.40 GHz
Single-Core | Integer7019223728521287
Single-Core | Float829108043210041569
Single-Core | Crypto15402041109715362542
Single-Core | Score78110254269321434
Multi-Core | Integer18344435112719904121
Multi-Core | Float20454514127522564662
Multi-Core | Crypto34463658293737794903
Multi-Core | Score19784420126221594322
Linkhttps://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/19288841https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/17620675https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/18422984https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/19163578https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/15877367

 Since the Intel N95 is an entry-level product with only four efficient cores and rather low frequencies, it was certainly not designed to offer breakthrough performance. Therefore, it is not surprising that it ranked substantially slower than Intel's eight-core Core i3-N305 'Alder Lake-N' processor. Yet, it stacks up very well against Intel's existing Celeron 7305 CPU with one high-performance and four energy-efficient cores that operate at 1.10 GHz.

While we yet have to determine how exactly Intel intends to position its N95 processor, we also included scores obtained on AMD's entry-level Athlon Gold 7220U CPU with two Zen 2 cores at 2.40 GHz ~ 3.70 GHz and with a 4MB of L3 cache for comparison. Evidently, the Athlon Gold 7220U shows better GeekBench 5 scores than Intel's N95, though we should bear in mind that AMD's lowest-end next-generation Athlon will be the dual-core Athlon Silver 7120U (which yet has to get benchmarked). 

Even though Geekbench 5 is not exactly the best way to estimate performance of a CPU in real-life applications, it should be noted that it can still be used to find out how processors stack up against each other. 

Meanwhile, keep in mind that for now we are dealing with pre-production Alder Lake-N hardware and it might be too early to draw any conclusions about performance of these CPUs.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • Ar558
    Looks like this will be a nice replacement for a Celeron 7305 given it smashes it in all the tests if it's a similar price. Good to see some of Alder Lake improvements trickling into the low end stuff as that will help most people who dont buy high -end or even mid range stuff
    Reply
  • OriginFree
    Ar558 said:
    Looks like this will be a nice replacement for a Celeron 7305 given it smashes it in all the tests if it's a similar price. Good to see some of Alder Lake improvements trickling into the low end stuff as that will help most people who dont buy high -end or even mid range stuff

    Would work great for low end office machines (reception, data entry, tech support, etc.).
    I suspect as people head back to the office (voluntarily or not) there will be a uptick in demand for new machines to replace the pre-pandemic machines.
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    Looking forward to seeing these in the future Chromebook, Old Celerons did surprising well in that constrained OS(Support more tabs then you would think as well as not drop frames with streaming)..
    Reply
  • Six_Tymes
    Anton, in the context of your story, its a grain of salt, not pinch. You are not discussing how to make soup.
    Reply