Celeron N3150 CPU Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]
The Celeron N3150 is a quad-core processor with a TDP of only 6 W, 1.6 GHz base clock and turbo clock of 2.08 GHz, targeted on low-cost desktop computers. Let’s see how it performs, compared to its main competitors.
Intel launched recently their new low-cost, low-TDP desktop processors, named Braswell. They come to replace the Bay Trail-D CPUs, actually using the same microarchitecture, but with 14 nm manufacturing process and a new 8th generation graphics engine. They have a 2 MiB L2 cache and support DDR3L-1600 dual channel memory.
The table below shows the Braswell CPUs launched so far.

CPU	Cores	Base Clock	Turbo Clock	TDP
Pentium N3700	4	1.6 GHz	2.4GHz	6 W
Celeron N3150	4	1.6 GHz	2.08 GHz	6 W
Celeron N3050	2	1.6 GHz	2.16 GHz	6 W
Celeron N3000	2	1.04 GHz	2.08 GHz	4 W

Braswell processors are SoC (system on a chip) CPUs, which means the processing cores, memory controller, video engine, and even the chipset are integrated in a single die. It helps to keep the cost and the thermal dissipation low.
Figure 1 unveils the Celeron N3150 CPU. As well as the other processors of this family, it comes soldered to the motherboard. In this case, it comes with the ASRock N3150B-ITX motherboard, which we analyzed recently.

Figure 1: the Celeron N3150 processor

Let’s compare the main specs of the reviewed CPUs in the next page.
[nextpage title=”The Reviewed CPUs”]
To have an idea of the Celeron N3150’s performance, we ran some benchmarks comparing it to other two similar CPUs (also with four cores, low cost, and low TDP), the AMD Athlon 5150 and the Intel Pentium J2900.
In the tables below, we compare the main features of the CPUs included in our review.

CPU	Cores	HT	IGP	Internal Clock	Turbo Clock	Core	Tech.	TDP	Socket	Price
Celeron N3150	4	No	Yes	1.6 GHz	2.08 GHz	Braswell	14 nm	6 W	FCBGA1170	USD 70*
Pentium J2900	4	No	Yes	2.41 GHz	2.67 GHz	Bay Trail-D	22 nm	10 W	FCBGA1170	USD 104*
Athlon 5150	4	No	Yes	1.6 GHz	No	Kabini	28 nm	25 W	AM1	USD 50**

* The price includes the motherboard, since this CPU is soldered to the motherboard
** Motherboards can be found starting at USD 30
Prices were researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review. TDP stands for Thermal Design Power and states the maximum amount of heat the CPU can dissipate.
Below you can see the memory configuration for each CPU.

CPU	L2 Cache	L3 Cache	Memory Support	Memory Channels
Celeron N3150	2 MiB	No	Up to DDR3L-1600	Two
Pentium J2900	2 MiB	No	Up to DDR3-1333	Two
Athlon 5150	2 MiB	No	Up to DDR3-1600	One

Below we have a quick comparison of the video engine of the CPUs.

CPU	Video Engine	DirectX	Clock	Cores
Celeron N3150	Intel HD	12	320/640 MHz	12
Pentium J2900	Intel HD	11	688/896 MHz	4
Athlon 5150	Radeon R3	11.2	600 MHz	128

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]
During our benchmarking sessions, we used the configuration listed below. Between our benchmarking sessions, the only variable device was the CPU being tested and the motherboard and memory, which had to be replaced to match the different CPUs.
Hardware Configuration

Motherboard (Celeron N3150): ASRock N3150B-ITX
Motherboard (Athlon 5150): ASUS AM1M-A
Motherboard (Pentium J2900): ASRock Q2900M
CPU Cooler: Intel/AMD stock
Memory (Pentium J2900 and Athlon 5150): 8 GiB DDR3-2133, two G.Skill Ripjaws F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH 4 GiB memory modules configured at 1333 MHz or 1600 MHz depending on the CPU
Memory (Celeron N3150): 8 GiB DDR3L, two Kingston KVR16IS11/4 4GiB modules, configured at 1600 MHz
Boot drive: Kingston HyperX Savage 480 GB
Video Card: integrated
Video Monitor: Philips 236VL
Power Supply: Corsair CX500M

Operating System Configuration

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
NTFS
Video resolution: 1920 x 1080 60 Hz

Driver Versions

AMD driver version: 15.7
Intel Inf chipset driver version: 10.0

Software Used

Error Margin
We adopted a 4% error margin. Thus, differences below 4% cannot be considered relevant. In other words, products with a performance difference below 4% should be considered as having similar performance.
[nextpage title=”PCMark 8″]
PCMark 8 is a benchmarking software that uses real-world applications to measure the computer performance. We ran three tests: Home, which includes web browsing, writing, light gaming, photo editing, and video chat tests; Creative, which includes web browsing, photo editing, video editing, group video chat, media transcoding, and gaming; and Work, which runs tasks such as writing documents, web browsing, spreadsheets, editing, and video chatting. Let’s analyze the results.

The Celeron N3150 achieved a score 5.8% lower than the Pentium J2900, but similar to the Athlon 5150 in the Home test.

On the Creative benchmark, the Celeron N3150 achieved a score 7.9% lower than the Pentium J2900, but similar to the Athlon 5150.

On the Work benchmark, the Celeron N3150 was 13% slower than the Pentium J2900, but was in a tie with the Athlon 5150.

[nextpage title=”Video processing”]

DivX Converter

We used the DivX converter, a tool included in the DivX package, in order to measure the encoding performance using this codec. The DivX codec is capable of recognizing and using all available cores and the SSE4 instruction set.
We converted a Full HD, six-minute long .mov video file into a .avi file, using the “HD 1080p” output profile.
The results below are given in seconds, so the lower the better.

On DivX encoding, the Celeron N3150 was 18% slower than the Pentium J2900, but 9.7% faster than the Athlon 5150.

Media Espresso 6.7

Media Espresso is a video conversion program that uses the graphics processing unit of the video engine to speed up the conversion process. We converted a 1 GiB, 1920x1080i, 23,738 kbps, .mov video file to a smaller 320×200, H.264, .MP4 file for viewing on a smartphone. The results below are given in seconds, so the lower the better.

Here the Celeron N3150 was 18% slower than the Pentium J2900 and 18% faster than the Athlon 5150.

DVDShrink

DVDShrink is an old but still very useful program to “shrink” video DVDs that have more than 4.7 GiB of data to fit single-layer DVD media. We used it to compress the DVD of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” DVD to 4.7 GiB. The results below are given in seconds, so the lower the better.

In this test, the Celeron N3150 was 22% slower than the Pentium J2900, but took the same time as the Athlon 5150.
[nextpage title=”Cinebench R15″]
Cinebench R15 is based on the Cinema 4D software. It is very useful to measure the performance gain obtained by the presence of several processing cores while rendering heavy 3D images. Rendering is an area where a bigger number of cores helps a lot, because usually this kind of software recognize several processors (Cinebench R15, for example, can use up to 256 processing cores).
Obviously, none of the tested CPUs is targeted to rendering, but we included this benchmark because it can give us a great notion of multiple core performance.
We ran the CPU benchmark, which renders a complex image using all the processing cores (real and virtual) to speed up the process. The result is given as a score.
We also ran the OpenGL benchmark, which shows a 3D animation rendered with the GPU, which gives a frames per second (fps) result.

On the CPU benchmark, the Celeron N3150 was 32% slower than the Pentium J2900 and 15% slower than the Athlon 5150.

On the OpenGL benchmark, the Celeron N3150 was 100% faster than the Pentium J2900, but 7% slower than the Athlon 5150.
[nextpage title=”Photoshop CC”]
The best way to measure the performance of a CPU is by using real programs. The problem, of course, is to create a methodology that offers precise results. For Photoshop CC we used a script named “Retouch Artist Speed Test”, which applies a series of filters to a standard image and gives the time Photoshop takes to run all of them. The results are given in seconds, so the less, the best.

In this test, the Celeron N3150 was 18% slower than the Pentium J2900 and 16% slower than the Athlon 5150.
[nextpage title=”3DMark”]

3DMark is a program with a set of several benchmarks. We choose to run the Cloud Gate, Sky Diver, and Fire Strike. The 3DMark Cloud Gate benchmark measures DirectX 10 performance, while Sky Diver and Fire Strike measure DirectX 11 performance.

On the Cloud Gate benchmark, the Celeron N3150 was 37% faster than the Pentium J2900, and performed similarly to the Athlon 5150.

On the Sky Diver benchmark, the Celeron N3150 was 85% faster than the Pentium J2900, but 19% slower than the Athlon 5150.

On the Fire Strike Benchmark, the Celeron N3150 was 38% faster than the Pentium J2900, but 38% slower than the Athlon 5150.[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]
When we compared the earlier generation of the low-consumption Intel CPUs (Bay Trail-D) to its competitor, the AMD Athlon 5150, we concluded that the quad-core Intel model offered higher processing power than the AMD’s, but they had a weaker GPU.
Now, Intel launched the new low-cost Braswell processors, with even lower TDP and a new graphics engine. That we could see about the Celeron N3150 is that it is slower (in CPU performance) than the Pentium J2900 (which is expected because it uses the same architecture, but with a lower clock rate). However, it was clear that the GPU on the Celeron N3150 is way more powerful than the Pentium J2900’s, but not as fast as the GPU present on the Athlon 5150.
Anyway, what we could conclude on this test is that the Celeron N3150 is a CPU fast enough for simple tasks (like web surfing or text editing) and that its low price and energy consumption makes it excellent when you want to build a small, quiet and energy-conscious computer, with no need for high performance.