AMD Athlon II N350 vs Intel Core i3-2357M vs AMD Athlon II N370

The Intel Core i3-2357M is a power efficient ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) processor for thin and light laptops. The base frequency of 1.3 GHz is relatively low and the CPU does not support Turbo Boost for automatic overclocking. Due to HyperThreading, the i7-2357M is able to handle 4 threads in parallel. Compared to similar clocked Celeron and Pentium models, the i3 features the faster HD 3000 graphics card and offers more enabled features (like Quick Sync). However, compared to the expensive i7 CPUs, the i3 lacks VT-d, Trusted Execution and VPro support.

Sandy Bridge is the evolutionary successor of the Arrandale architecture. The most notable improvements is the improved Turbo 2.0 (not used for the processing cores in the i3-2357M) and the integration of the graphics card into the 32nm CPU core. 

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 clocked at 350 or 950MHz (Turbo Boost). Due to the slower clock rate without the Turbo, compared to HD Graphics 3000 in 35W and 45W processors (usually clocked at 650 base speed in non LV processors), the performance should be noticeable lower.

The performance of the CPU should be a bit higher than a similar clocked Arrandale Core i3 ULV like the Core i3-380UM. In our benchmarks, the CPU was on a level with a Penryn Pentium with 1.6 - 2 GHz (T3000-T3400) or an AMD A6-3410MX.

The TDP of 17W (includes the integrated GPU and memory controller) allows the use of the 2357M CPU in small subnotebooks.