Intel Processor N100
Recently, notebook and mini PC models equipped with the Intel Processor N100 (hereinafter referred to as Intel N100) have been attracting attention. This is because PCs equipped with this CPU are extremely cheap. You can buy a laptop for less than 100,000 yen, and a mini PC for about 30,000 yen.
The question about the Intel N100 is whether it has enough performance for practical use. This time, we prepared notebook PCs equipped with Intel N100 and N95, which are sold for about 30,000 yen to 50,000 yen, and notebooks equipped with 12th generation Core i5, which are sold for about 100,000 yen, and have practical performance. I decided to compare.
In the verification, we posted a video of how Windows and various applications were actually running, so that you could experience the difference in response between each CPU. If you are curious about the capabilities of the Intel N100, please refer to it.
What kind of CPU is Intel N100?
Notebook with Intel Processor N100 and N95
Intel N100 is a CPU that is only equipped with the power-saving “E core” (Alder Lake-N), which is called the 12th generation Core “Alder Lake-S”. In other words, it lacks a high-performance P core.
However, since it is a current generation CPU core, the performance cannot be underestimated. In terms of performance on a single core, for example, the Intel N100 with 4 cores and 4 threads is said to be comparable to Skylake (equivalent to Core i3) with 2 cores and 4 threads, or the Sandy Bridge (equivalent to Core i7) with 4 cores and 8 threads. ing.
However, whether it is comparable to Skylake’s Core i3 or Sandy Bridge’s Core i7, the former is an 8-year old CPU and the latter is a 12-year old CPU. Please consider this carefully. You end up feeling disappointed, thinking, “I was planning to do ○○, but… it’s no good.”
As mentioned at the beginning, we prepared three types of notebook PCs for the verification: Core i5 (12th generation) and Intel N100/N95, operated them, and captured images.
In addition, Intel N100 and N95 have the same 4-core 4-thread operation and the same operating clock of 3.4GHz. The built-in GPU clock of the N95 is 1.2GHz, which is higher than the N100’s 750Hz, but there are differences in terms of GPU, as the number of execution units is 24, which is 8 more in the N100.
Now, the five flows I created this time are web browsing, file operations, spreadsheets, photo correction, and video editing. For things after spreadsheets, we focus on actual usage situations, such as opening a reference page in a browser or launching a file from Explorer, rather than the application itself.
We hope that you can check the processing speed and understand the suitability and unsuitability of each product from these videos.
Intel N100/N95, Core i5 notebook PC used
Let me introduce the three notebook PCs I used this time.
【Intel N100】CHUWI「GemiBook XPro」
A 14.1-inch notebook PC equipped with Intel N100 (4 E cores, 4 threads in total). The display resolution is 1,920 x 1,080 dots. Direct sales price is 36,900 yen. Memory is 8GB (single channel) LPDDR5-4800, storage is 256GB and uses SSD (SATA).
【Intel N95】BiTECOOL「NC15N」
A 15.6-inch notebook PC equipped with Intel N95 (4 E cores, 4 threads in total). The display resolution is 1,920 x 1,080 dots. Currently, a product that appears to be a successor model is on sale, but it costs around 40,000 yen. The memory is 16GB (single channel) with LPDDR5, and the storage is 512GB with SSD (NVMe).
[Core i5]Mouse computer “mouse F4-I5U01OB-A”
A 14-inch notebook PC equipped with Core i5-1240P (4 P cores, 8 E cores, 16 threads in total). The display resolution is 1,920 x 1,080 dots. Direct sales price starts from 109,800 yen. The memory is 8GB (single channel) and DDR4-3200, and the storage is 512GB and uses SSD (NVMe).
Intel N100 and N95 are actually almost the same CPU part. With the same number of cores and the same clock, the TDP is 6W for the N100 and 15W for the N95. However, GPUs are quite different. In terms of the number of execution units, the N100 has 24 and the N95 has 16. However, the GPU clock is higher on the N95.
On the other hand, there are performance differences in areas other than the CPU, as only the CHUWI GemiBook Xpro has 8GB of memory and SATA SSD storage. The mouse F4, which is considered to have higher performance than these, also has DDR4 memory, which has a lower clock speed than DDR5. Differences in memory performance (mainly capacity) tend to appear in benchmarks.
Standard benchmark results
Now let’s take a look at the results of standard benchmarks.
First, here are the results of measuring storage performance with CrystalDiskMark. Intel N100 (CHUWI GemiBook Xpro) is the only SATA 3.0 connection this time, so it is naturally slow. In terms of read, sequential is only 21% faster than Core i5 (mouse F4-I5U01OB-A) and 16% faster than the fastest Intel N95 (BiTECOOL NC15N), and random is also clearly inferior. For lights, the difference is smaller than for leads, but it’s basically the same.
PCMark 10. Overall, only Core i5 stands out with 5,397 points, and Intel N100/N95 both have 3,000 points, so the PC performance is 56-58% of Core i5. The performance difference between Intel N100 and N95 was only about 105 points, which was not that large.
The results of the App Start-up test for the Essentials scenario with a large storage factor in PCMark 10 are interesting. The situation has changed from the time of CrystalDiskMark, first of all, Core i5 which was second in CrystalDiskMark came first, Intel N95 which was supposed to have the fastest NVMe SSD came in second, and Intel N100 which was far behind in CrystalDiskMark came in close behind. That’s 3rd place.
App Start-up is a test that starts and measures an actual application, but in this case, not only storage performance but also CPU performance and memory access speed are involved. This result shows that CPU performance is quite important as Core i5 is at the top. In other tests, Core i5 basically leads the others by a wide margin.
I would like to check the CPU performance with Cinebench R23. As expected from the CPU specs, the Intel N100 scored slightly higher than the Intel N95. It is surprising that the Intel N100, which has the same maximum clock and lower TDP, has a higher score, but the actual TDP and clock will vary depending on the cooling performance and settings of the PC, so even with these results. It’s not strange.
Conclusion: Intel N100/N95 is practical and attractively priced
My impressions after completing the test were that the Intel N100/N95 was more usable than I expected. It’s different from Atom after all. There was not a noticeable difference in performance except for creative applications and file operations such as compression and decompression. I think there are quite a lot of people who find that just browsing and spreadsheets is enough. Of course, I won’t know if I use it more, but it’s cheap anyway. It’s also good for people who need a laptop but are worried about the budget. You can’t start unless you try it first.
When choosing Intel N100/N95, pay attention to the amount of memory installed and the speed of storage. Originally, it was a low-performance CPU by today’s standards. If you skimp on everything, you will quickly become dissatisfied. If you skimp on the CPU and make other things (a little) more luxurious, you’ll be happy. It is better to have 16GB of memory and a decent generation NVMe SSD for storage.
As mentioned above, you may get the impression that the Intel N100/N95 can cover a wide range of areas visually, but I cannot recommend it for business purposes. Excel works reasonably well, but it’s hard to judge without trying it with the amount of data you’ll actually use. There are also problems depending on the function or application version being used. If there are any uncertainties, it is better to simply choose a PC equipped with Core.
In business, it is also important to be able to quickly respond to tasks given to you. It is better to have as little stress as possible. There is also a need for margin in terms of performance. Applications are updated every year, and while they become more convenient, they can also become more difficult to process. There’s a good reason why the Core i5 (or “5” grade CPU) is the best-selling in the business world.
Finally, I picked up the three time-measured times of file compression, decompression, and transcoding, and calculated the ratio of Intel N100 and Intel N95 when Core i5 was set at 100%.
As a result, compared to Core i5, Intel N100 was 68.5% and N95 was 71.%. PCMark 10 Overall is 55.8% and 57.7%, so the difference is narrower than that. However, since PCMark 10 uses real applications, it can be said that it is close to actual operation. Even with PCs other than those introduced here, the PCMark 10 Standard score is the best when comparing performance for everyday use.
