Intel Atom N2600 vs AMD E-300

Intel Atom N2600

The Intel Atom N2600 is a dual core entry level processor for netbooks and tablets. It was officially announced in December 2011 after some troubles with the graphics drivers (according to rumors). 

The N2600 features a PowerVR SGX545 based graphics card (at 400MHz) named Graphics Media Accelerator 3600 and a video decoding engine for MPEG4 Part2, VC-1, WMV9, and H.264. Furthermore, the chip now also supports DisplayPort 1.1 and HDMI 1.3a outputs.

The processor core is still similar to the old Atom processors. Therefore the performance of the N2600 is comparable to an older Atom N570.

The integrated 64Bit Single-Channel DDR3-800/1067 memory controller supports two SODIMMS and a maximum of 2 GB RAM.

AMD E-300

The AMD E-300 (codename Zacate) is a low-end dual-core processor designed for the smaller laptops and netbooks. The E-series processor has a relatively fast iGPU and a single channel DDR3-1066 memory controller.

An E-300 has two Bobcat processor cores running at 1.3 GHz, each with the access to 512 KB of Level 2 cache (1 M in total). In comparison to the Atom processors, the Bobcat architecture uses an out-of-order execution and is therefore faster at the same clock speed.

The Radeon HD 6310 iGPU has 80 unified shaders and an UVD3 video processing engine. The iGPU has no trouble outshining the Intel GMA 3150 in the Atom processors, and it does not lag behind the Nvidia ION, either. The Radeon has support for HDMI 1.4a video output.

Performance

The average E-300 in our database is in the same league as the A4-1250, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. Which isn't a great result. This is a fairly slow chip, as of mid 2022; expect to see plenty of slowdowns no matter what it is that you are currently doing.

Power consumption

This APU has a default TDP of 18 W, meaning an active cooling solution is a must.

The AMD E-300 is manufactured on a 32 nm process leading to really, really low, as of 2022, energy efficiency.