Intel Atom N455 vs MediaTek MT8161 vs Intel Atom D525

Intel Atom N455

MediaTek MT8161

The MediaTek MT8161 is an ARM based entry-level to mid-range SoC for (Android based) tablets. It offers four ARM Cortex-A53 processor cores (quad-core) that are clocked with up to 1.3 GHz. Furthermore, an ARM Mali-720 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (e.g., accessing 1 GB in the Lenovo Tab 2 A8-50), Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band 802.11 b/g/n are integrated in the SoC.

The performance is situated in the entry level of 2015 and often similar to the Kirin 910T (see benchmark below).

Intel Atom D525

The Intel Atom D525 is a dual core processor that is intended for nettops, but also used in netbooks (like the Asus Eee PC 1215N). It consists out of two Atom cores clocked at 1.8 GHz and due to HyperThreading, the D525 is able to process four threads at a time. The D525 misses Speedstep and is therefore running at 1.8 GHz all the time (and using a lot more power than other Atoms without load).

In the processor package, the Atom D525 has an integrated DDR2/DDR3 memory controller and the GMA 3150 called graphics card.

The performance of the D525 can be on a level of slow clocked single core CPUs like the Intel SU2700 or AMD K125 if both cores are used. In single threaded applications, the performance is clearly worse and only on the level of a 1.8 GHz Atom CPU.