Intel Processor U300 vs AMD Athlon II N350

Intel Processor U300

The Intel Processor U300 is an entry-level mobile CPU for thin and light laptops of the Raptor Lake-U series. It was announced in early 2023 and offers one performance core (Raptor Cove architecture P-core, similar to Alder Lake) and 4 efficient cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture). The P-cores support Hyper-Threading for 6 processing threads when combined with the E-cores. The clock rate ranges from 1.2 to 4.4 GHz on the performance cluster and 0.9 to 3.3 GHz on the efficient cluster. The per-clock performance of the E-cores should be similar to old Skylake cores (compare to the Core i7-6700HQ). All cores have access to 8 MB of L3 cache.

Performance

While we have not tested a single system powered by the U300 as of February 2024, its performance should be very similar to the outgoing Alder Lake Pentium 8505, since there is little difference between the two. The average U300 is set to be 10% to 20% behind the Ryzen 3 5300U and the Core i7-1185G7, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned, making the former an entry-level chip as of early 2024.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are.

Features

The integrated memory controller supports various memory types up to DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200, LPDDR5-5200, and LPDDR4x-4267. The Thread Director (in hardware) can support the operating system to decide which thread to use on the performance or efficient cores for the best performance. For AI tasks, the CPU also integrates GNA 3.0 and DL Boost (via AVX2). Quick Sync in version 8 is the same as in the Rocket Lake CPUs and supports MPEG-2, AVC, VC-1 decode, JPEG, VP8 decode, VP9, HEVC, and AV1 decode in hardware. Several PCIe 4 lanes (x8 for a GPU and two x4 for SSDs) as well as several PCIe 3 lanes are on offer.

The integrated graphics adapter is based on the Xe architecture and offers 48 of the 96 EUs (Execution Units) operating at up to 1.1 GHz.

Power consumption

The U300 has a base power consumption of 15 W, with 55 W being its maximum Intel-recommended Turbo power consumption. The CPU is built with a 10 nm process marketed as Intel 7.

AMD Athlon II N350

The AMD Athlon II N350 is an entry to mid range dual core processor for laptops. Compared to the faster Phenom II and Turion II processors of 2010, the Athlon II N350 features only a 64 Bit FPU (Floating Point Unit), and not 128 Bit as the Athlon II Desktop. Therefore, some rumors also indicate that the N350 could still be based on K8 parts.

The Athlon II N350 offers an integrated DDR3-1066 (or 800 according to Wikipedia) dual-channel memory controller and a 1.6 GHz HyperTransport 3.0 link (HT3200) to the chipset.

The performance of the Athlon N350 should be on par with a 2.2 GHz clocked Pentium T4400 processor of 2009.