Intel Celeron N4020 vs Intel Core i5-10400H

Intel Celeron N4020

The Intel Celeron N4020 is a slow dual-core processor (SoC) of the Gemini Lake refresh product family; as such, it is designed for use in laptops and mini-PCs of the most affordable flavor. The Celeron was launched in Q4 2019. Its CPU cores run at 1.1 GHz to 2.8 GHz, the latter being a moderate 200 MHz upgrade over the preceding N4000 chip. Other key specs include a DDR4/LPDDR4 memory controller (up to 2,400 MHz and up to 8 GB, with independent reports claiming as much as 32 GB will work just fine) and an integrated UHD 600 graphics adapter.

Architecture & Features

Just like Apollo Lake family products, the ever-popular N3350 included, the N4020 is manufactured on a really old, as of late 2023, 14 nm process. What makes the newer Celerons different are the slightly improved processor cores with double the L2 cache and also, somewhat counterintuitively, a reduction in physical size.

The Goldmont Plus microarchitecture is not much different from what was used in Gemini Lake processors like the N4000. A relatively large 4 MB L2 cache features prominently on the rather short list of N4020's strong sides, allowing for a marginal increase in performance-per-MHz figures compared to processors of previous generations. Still, Gemini Lake refresh processors are a clear step down from Core i3/i5/i7/i9 series processors, both in performance and in features.

The N4020 has six PCI-Express 2.0 lanes at its disposal. While very few N4020-based SBCs, nettops and laptops feature an NVMe M.2 slot, you can use an NVMe SSD as a boot drive with this processor (read/write rates will be limited to 2 GB/s, though). Furthermore, partial Wi-Fi 5 support is built into the CPU. The Celeron also supports up to eight USB 3.0 ports and two SATA III storage devices.

Please note this is not a user-replaceable CPU. They solder it straight to the motherboard for good (BGA1090 socket interface).

Performance

While slightly faster than the outgoing Celeron N4000, the average N4020 in our extensive database only just manages to match the N6211, as far as multi-thread performance is concerned. These three chips deliver multi-thread CB R15, CB R20 and CB R23 scores that are so low, they lag behind a single-thread score of any half-decent CPU such as an i5-1135G7. In other words, these Celeron N chips are good enough for basic tasks only such as word processing and Web browsing with two or three tabs open at a time.

The Celeron N4120, a quad-core chip with a similar name, has little trouble leaving the N4020 behind in most workloads - which is not to say it is a fast CPU.

Jacking the long-term power limit value up to something like 9 W will help improve system responsiveness noticeably.

Graphics

The UHD Graphics 600 is based on Intel's Generation 9 architecture, much like the  HD Graphics 520 or the UHD Graphics 615 or other widespread Intel iGPUs found in Core i3/i5/i7/i9 processors of generations six to ten.

Just like the HD Graphics 500, the UHD Graphics 600 is DX12 compatible. The iGPU's 12 EUs can run at up to 650 MHz. The Iris Plus G7 iGPU that certain 10th Gen Ice Lake processors have packs 64 EUs, for reference. As a low-end solution, UHD Graphics 600 will let you play some seriously old titles, but that's about as far as its talents go.

Perhaps more importantly, this graphics solution can drive up to 3 monitors with resolutions as high as 4096x2160@60. Furthermore, it will have no trouble HW-decoding AVC, HEVC and VP9-encoded videos. The newer AV1 codec will be decoded via software, with the limited CPU horsepower imposing a limit on video resolutions that can be played back without stuttering. 1080p60 videos are out of reach while 720p25 videos run fine, to give you an example.

Power consumption

The low 6 W TDP (also known as the long-term Power Limit) makes it easy for laptop makers to ditch the fan. Performance sustainability will be poor unless the long-term Power Limit is set to a value higher than the default 6 W and a fan is available to aid in heat dissipation.

The Celeron N4020 is built with one of the old 14 nm Intel processes for poor, as of mid 2023, energy efficiency.

Intel Core i5-10400H

The Intel Core i5-10400H is a fast processor for laptops with four cores based on the Comet Lake-H series (4th generation of Skylake architecture). The processor clocks at between 2.6 and 4.6 GHz (up to 4.4 with 4 cores) and can execute up to eight threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper-Threading. According to Intel, the CPU is manufactured in 14nm (14nm++) process. 

The Comet Lake architecture is similar to Coffee Lake and offers the same features and is produced in the same 14nm process. Other than the improved clock rates, the memory controller now also supports faster DDR4-2933 RAM. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

The Core i5-10400H supports the management features vPro, TXT and SIPP. 

Performance

The performance should be slightly better than the old Core i7-8809G (Quad-Core 3.1 - 4.2) which was the fastest mobile quad core by Intel.

Graphics

The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 iGPU is supposed to offer a similar performance as the UHD630 in the Core i5-9300H. As a  low-end solution it will probably only run current games smoothly at reduced details - if at all.

Power Consumption

Intel specifies the TDP with 45 watts and therefore the i5 is only suited for big laptops with good cooling solutions. Using cTDP-down, the CPU can also be configured to 35 Watt resulting in a reduced performance.