Intel Core i3-N300 vs Intel Core i7-10610U

Intel Core i3-N300

The Intel Core i3-N305 is an entry-level mobile CPU for thin and light laptops from the Alder Lake-N series. It was announced in early 2023 and offers no performance cores and 8 efficient cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture). The chip does not support HyperThreading and clocks with up to 3.8 GHz (single core, 3 GHz all core Turbo). The performance of the E-cores should be similar to old Skylake cores (compare to the Core i7-6700HQ). All cores can use up to 6 MB L3-cache. 

Performance

The performance depends on the cooling and TDP settings and should be somewhere similar to the old  Alder Lake Pentium 8500 (1 performance core, 4 efficiency cores, max. 4.4 GHz and 8 MB L3-cache). The multi-threaded performance should be quite good with the 8 cores but will suffer due to the low TDP. Single thread performance will suffer due to the missing P-cores and relatively low boost clock speeds.

Features

The Alder Lake-N chips only support single channel memory with up to DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200 or LPDDR5-4800. The chip also supports Quick Sync and AV1 decoding (most likely same engine as in Alder Lake). Furthermore, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 are partly integrated (but no Thunderbolt). External chips can be connected via PCIe Gen3 x9 (via the PCH).

The integrated graphics adapter is based on the Xe-architecture and offersall 32 EUs (Execution Units) operating at up to 1.25 GHz. In addition to the single channel memory, the gaming performance is very limited of the iGPU.

Power consumption

The i3 has a base power consumption of 7 W and is therefore even suited for fanless cooling. The CPU is built with a further improved 10nm SuperFin process at Intel (called Intel 7).

Intel Core i7-10610U

The Intel Core i7-10610U is a power efficient quad-core SoC for notebooks based on the Comet Lake (CML-U) generation and was announced in August 2019. Compared to the similar Whiskey Lake processors (e.g. Core i7-8665U), the only difference is support for higher memory speeds (DDR4-2666 vs 2400) and two additional cores in the top model (not in this i7-10610U). The processor cores are clocked between 1.8 and 4.9 GHz (unverified). Thanks to Hyper-Threading 8 threads can be used. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

Compared to the similar Core i7-10510U, the 10610U supports vPro.

The integrated graphics adapter however is still the same as in the previous generations. It should be still called Intel UHD Graphics 620 and clock from 300 - 1150 MHz in the i7. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a VP9 and H.265 de- and encoder and an integrated dual channel DDR4-2666 / LPDDR4x 2933 / LPDDR3-2133 memory controller.

Performance

The average 10610U in our database is in the same league as the Core i5-1035G1 and also the Core i5-8257U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term power limit of 25 W, the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G7 is among the fastest laptops built around the 10610U that we know of. It can be about 30% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Power consumption

This Core i7 has a default TDP of 15 W (also known as the long-term power limit). Laptop manufacturers are free to change that value to anything between 10 W and 25 W, with clock speeds and performance changing accordingly. Perhaps more importantly, short-term power consumption of 10th gen Comet Lake U processors can be as high as 80 W or even 90 W, making passively cooled designs rather unlikely to appear.

Core i7-10610U is manufactured on an old, as of late 2022, 14 nm Intel process for subpar energy efficiency.