Intel decided to release Core processors without large cores

While Intel has already introduced its older Raptor Lake desktop CPUs, it is preparing to launch new Alder Lake processors. We’re talking about ultra power efficient Alder Lake-N CPUs, and today we’re taking a first look at a few of these models.

These are called Core i3-N300 and Core i3-N305. There is a version where these are the older Alder Lake-N and the rest will be offered under the new Processor branding, which will replace Pentium and Celeron.

The most important feature of the new products is that they have eight cores, but they are all small cores. As a reminder, they do not support Hyper-Threading. Core i3-N305 frequencies are 1.8-3.8 GHz. And such a CPU in Geekbench scores 1025 and 4420 in single-threaded and multi-threaded modes, respectively. For comparison, the high-performance Core i7-8750H scores pretty much the same because we’re only talking about small cores now. Of course, Geekbench doesn’t reflect actual performance in apps, but still, the results are encouraging.

Thus, it seems that the new CPUs will be productive enough for their segment, despite being the weakest of the Core family in their generation.