Amd a6 quad core vs intel celeron: AMD A6-4400M vs Intel Celeron N3060: What is the difference?

Sound reproduction requires speakers or at least headphones. Laptops have built-in audio, but the quality can’t be compared to external speakers.

This is the minimum set. Everything else depends on how the computer will be used. For example:

A student has poor eyesight → look for a device with a large and eye-safe screen.

The child is drawing or doing graphic design → You may need a quality monitor and a special drawing device — a graphics tablet.

Teen makes music → buy a computer with a dedicated sound card, MIDI keyboard, and other compatible music devices.

The student is interested in 3D modeling, video processing or computer games → you need a powerful video card and, again, a good monitor.

You often move or like to travel → choose a light laptop.

For online learning you will need webcam (built-in in laptops) and headset with microphone .

The printer is very useful in studies, especially when working with notes and handouts.

Foxford Online Home School students often take notes on paper to help them digest information better. For example, Styopa Pavlovskikh writes down some of the information during the lesson, and some of it is downloaded, printed and pasted into a notebook. Then he paints important terms and dates with bright text highlighters — a colorful memo for repetition is obtained.

‍ Stepan Pavlovskikh’s example of abstract
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Step 4. Choosing the software

Laptops and finished PCs are already equipped with an operating system. If you order a personal build, the OS will have to be purchased and installed separately.

There is no point in buying office software nowadays: texts, presentations and spreadsheets can be created and edited for free on the Internet using Google tools.

If your child is interested in design, drawing, 3D modeling or working with video, you will need special software. Which one, ask your student.

In addition, an antivirus is required for all computers. Despite the abundance of free products, it is better to buy Kaspersky or Dr. Web. They protect personal data more reliably, and also have a parental control function: with their help, you can limit your child’s access to inappropriate content on the Web and the time spent playing games.

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Step 5. Learning correctly at the computer

• The distance from the screen to the eyes must be at least 50 centimeters. The monitor should be clearly in front of the eyes.
• Do not slouch while sitting at a computer. Straighten your shoulders and keep your back straight. Don’t tilt your neck forward. If the back of the chair is too far away, use a pillow.
• Do not cross your legs, do not sit in Turkish. Legs should be bent at an angle of 90 degrees or slightly more, feet should be on the floor or a special stand.
• Arms in a bent position, at an angle of just over 90 degrees. Elbows — not on weight.
• Good lighting is essential when working at a computer. Ideally, place the table by the window.
• Get up from your computer once an hour and do light exercises for your eyes and hands.

We wish you productive studies!

Intel Celeron J3455 processor:

First acquaintance with the Apollo Lake platform and its comparison with previous developments microarchitecture, Intel decided to separate the two events. We just recently recalled the tick-tock approach in connection with its cancellation within the framework of the “adult” Core family: one more stage, “optimization”, was added there. Officially, it was introduced only now (the notorious Kaby Lake), in fact, back in 2014 (Haswell Refresh), but the main thing is not the dates, but the fact that there is, in general, nothing much to expect from the “third step” of this cycle. Neither in the past, nor in the present, and in the future, most likely, nothing will change: slightly improved crystal steppings and streamlined production allow us to slightly improve consumer characteristics (for example, offering new customers a little more performance «for the same money»), but not radically change the picture of the world.

However… However, Intel has long been working on more than one processor architecture, but several — fortunately, resources allow. Sometimes this proves useful: for example, the presence since 2000 of P6 and NetBurst «runners in neighboring lanes» helped the company a lot when the NetBurst architecture ran into a kind of dead end. The impasse was not complete, many of the NetBurst developments were later used in the first Core, but this happened later. And in 2006, the company made the further development of the Pentium Pro (which has evolved greatly over the past years, of course) the universal x86 architecture. But even then, this architecture did not remain the only one: it turned out that Intel already had designs in its “stash box” that surpassed even laptop processors in terms of economy, but were inferior (again, even to them) in performance. This is how the first Atoms appeared on the market. These processors were initially in the shadow of their more eminent relatives, which, however, fully corresponded to their positioning. In particular, the company regularly explained that “netbooks” are not “small cheap laptops” at all (and “nettops” are not just compact desktops), but specialized devices designed exclusively for content consumption, and not creative work. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the first «atomic» platforms were rather weak even for «consumption», managing to «slow down» on simple sites or refusing to play videos in many formats, and their evolution mainly consisted only in increasing the degree of integration of components, but not their functionality. An important factor was the delay in the development of «fine» production standards. However, we wrote about all this five years ago, testing the third (and last at that time) generation of Atom, so it makes no sense to repeat.

We have already studied the next two iterations of progress, so we will dwell on them briefly. Bay Trail is the first significant change in the microarchitecture of processor cores, which coincided with an increase in their number to four or even (in server models) up to eight, the integration of HD Graphics Gen7 GPU (similar to the «adult» Ivy Bridge), as well as peripheral controllers into one microcircuit, manufactured by according to the norms of 22 nm. In general, nothing in common with the previous lines in terms of basic parameters. Braswell is a simple 14nm shrink. The graphics core has “grown up” — up to 12/16 (against four) EU Gen8 (like the younger Broadwell), there are more USB ports, support for the SATA600 interface has appeared — thanks to thinner production standards, the peripheral component of the new SoCs has improved. But the processor cores remained almost the same, which led to approximately equal performance of Bay Trail and Braswell at the same frequency. And with the frequencies at first, it should be noted that not everything was smooth, and the increased performance of the GPU turned out to be mostly unclaimed due to the weak processor part — as a result, casual games both worked and continued to work, but something more serious on such systems still «did not take off.» In a word, the Braswell platform to some extent even disappointed us a little. And not only us: there are still a variety of Bay Trail-based tablets and laptops on sale, since they could be bought very cheaply at the end of the family’s life, and the update brought almost nothing practically significant. Even the energy efficiency of Braswell turned out to be generally the same (although the transition from 22 nm to 14 nm allowed us to hope for its improvement), despite the fact that this parameter continued to improve in the Core processors. The result of this was the actual death of Atom in the server market: SoCs of the Xeon D line became much more attractive for compact systems.

However, Apollo Lake replaced Braswell late last year. He came quietly and imperceptibly — in general, they like to make noise so-called. computer enthusiasts, and they usually do not pay attention to products of this class. And the characteristics of the new SoCs were too similar to those already familiar: 14 nm, two or four processor cores, 12 or 18 graphics pipelines, 2 SATA, 8 USB, etc. But we mentioned tick-tock above for a reason;) This approach to the Atom line was not used before the Bay Trail, but Braswell, in fact, turned out to be a typical “tick”: an improved process technology without architectural changes. Now the time has come for “taka”, i.e., a change in architecture. First of all, the processor cores have changed: Goldmont instead of Airmont. Whether there is any significant improvement behind the name change, we just need to check, because the transition from Silvermont to Airmont somehow did not inspire 🙂 This is what we will do, mentioning only that the GPU has also changed qualitatively, although and remained the same quantitatively — now it’s Gen9(as in Skylake), including a new video decoding block: with support for HEVC, VP9 and more. Actually, the latter is perhaps the most important from a practical point of view: you still can’t count on breakthroughs in gaming performance (if only because these chips are too “clamped” in terms of power consumption, and decent video cards themselves “eat” by an order of magnitude more at least), but there are enough people who want to watch online videos — the use of «atomic» platforms for creating media players did not begin yesterday. However, the study of the possibilities of new devices in relation to the HTPC scenario is a separate fertile topic. Today we will deal with «classic» problems. 900 is the fastest representative of the Bay Trail line, whose analogues in the new families should be considered just J4205 or J3710 (especially since they have approximately the same frequencies). But in practice, this is not very important: the Celeron N3150 was one of the best-selling representatives of Braswell on desktop boards (by the time the updated models appeared, everyone who wanted to purchase something similar had already done so), so it will be replaced in stores J3455. And that the J2900 was once the fastest and relatively rare (cheaper Celeron J19 sold better0023 big and dusty gray entry-level box into something compact. It will be possible (as usual) to compare «everyone with everyone» in our test results using a single method, and today we will focus on the Pentium G2130.

If we talk about intercompany competition, then in this case everything is even funnier: at the moment, the paths of AMD and Intel have already diverged so far that it makes sense to compare only a few models directly. Of course, no one has yet canceled Socket AM1 and/or BGA modifications of the same Kabini/Beema, but they occupy an intermediate position between the Celeron J and Celeron G lines, requiring (as a rule), like the latter, active cooling, but having performance and functionality at the level of the first (Athlon 5350 at one time acted just at the level of Pentium J2900, and its replacement with Athlon 5370 is another +5% clock frequency, and that’s it). At the same time, their GPU looks better in gaming applications, but it’s not enough for a serious gamer, and it’s better not to remember about video decoding at all. In general, it is not interesting to compare with them. But with the recently tested junior single-module (and very inexpensive) A6-7470K, on ​​the contrary: it is obvious that this processor does not have the best energy efficiency, but you can really play some games on it. And how things are going with the overall system performance — we’ll see.

Test methodology

The methodology is described in detail in a separate article. Here we briefly recall that it is based on the following four pillars:

• iXBT.com performance measurement method based on real applications of the sample of 2016
• Method for measuring power consumption when testing processors
• Method for monitoring power, temperature and processor load during testing
• 2016 iXBT.com Game Performance Measurement Methodology

Detailed results of all tests are available as a complete table of results (in Microsoft Excel 97-2003 format). Directly in the articles, we use already processed data. In particular, this applies to application tests, where everything is normalized relative to the reference system (as last year — a laptop based on the Core i5-3317U with 4 GB of memory and a 128 GB SSD) and grouped by computer application areas.

iXBT Application Benchmark 2016

A task for pure computing, where, nevertheless, four «atomic» cores still cannot fully compete with two «adult» architectures — even five years ago. And just one “dual-core” module of AMD desktop models is not so bad. In any case, it was true when comparing it with Bay Trail and Braswell — the new Intel surrogate platform is at least not slower. Adjusted for the number of supported computation threads, of course, but the cooling requirements of these SoCs are completely different than those of «real» desktop processors. And one and a half times superiority over J2900, which was once the best in its class, the J3455, which is no longer the fastest, but comparable to the mentioned model both in terms of frequencies and the number of cores, speaks for itself.

These applications treat representatives of «atomic» platforms even worse, and not all of them can boast of good multithreading utilization — accordingly, «desktop» processors (even budget and/or outdated ones) look even better than in the previous case. However, the performance increase in its niche is also clearly visible: a third compared to J2900 or one and a half times against the background of N3150. When testing top-end Intel solutions, we haven’t seen this for a long time — but it’s difficult to “grow” there. But the «atoms», as we see, there is still room to speed up.

The relative increase in performance “in a group” is comparable to raster graphics processing applications, the “chasm” between surrogates and “adult” processors is even more noticeable, but nothing can be done about it — as has been said more than once, this program, in fact, best optimized for Core 2 Duo. «Stroytekhnika» to some extent can compensate for this with high frequencies of modules, Pentium based on Core and there is nothing to compensate, and «atomic» models both lagged behind and will do it. However, today it is more important for us that their productivity is growing, and at a well-marked pace.

Which sometimes allow you to catch up with the fastest A6 for FM2 +. It has nothing to do with fast processors, of course, but the company’s solutions for AM1, for example, were even slower. Moreover, AMD did not begin to develop this platform — apparently, it was too unpromising. At Intel, in a tick-tock cycle, they managed to bring Atom to a higher level — something that Braswell was somewhat lacking.

The old code, as has been said more than once, does not react well to intensive methods of improving performance, but responds well to extensive ones: the number of cores, their frequency, etc. Despite this, J3455 managed to overtake J29 at least by 15%.00, but it was not necessary for him: after all (if we compare the two platforms), it is positioned at the level of J1900, which was even slower.

And here’s the scariest part of our story — despite the support for faster memory (1866 MHz versus only 1333), the Celeron J3455 blew out the Pentium J2900. Which, however, may be due to the memory itself — some delays could increase, and archivers are more demanding on them than on memory bandwidth. Therefore, we check the box “and this happens”, and move on to other tests.

For example, the results of file operations are very interesting, where the performance depends largely on the drive, but the integrated SATA controllers of Braswell and Bay Trail (where only SATA300 was supported at all) could not yet force the fast SSD we use as standard . Apollo Lake can’t seem to do it either, but it’s trying to do it more successfully 🙂

Misuse of all our test subjects, but it’s clearly visible who copes with the calculations. However, nothing new — the old Pentium is in the lead, and the J3455 is almost catching up with at least single-module AMD desktop processors, significantly surpassing its predecessors.

As mentioned above, when testing older models of desktop processors, we have not seen such a performance increase . .. but no matter how it was since Sandy Bridge appeared six years ago. The absolute level of performance, however, is still too low, so if that’s in the first place, Apollo Lake is still as «not needed» as Bay Trail with Braswell. However, do not forget that these platforms have completely different requirements for energy and heat dissipation than those of “full-fledged” desktop solutions. If the latter start to “clamp” on the heat pack, it turns out that the overall performance level of the Celeron J3455 is quite comparable to the Pentium 3805U, and the old surrogate platforms, neither Intel nor AMD, were incapable of such feats. Actually, it is not surprising that the 3805U is the last Pentium without Hyper-Threading support in the CULV segment, and the desktop models of this line have also recently gained support for additional computation threads: performance remains their main advantage, so if Celeron and Pentium J- families, you need to «pull up» and Y / U / G. Regular process.

Energy consumption and energy efficiency

As for the actual energy consumption, as we can see, Apollo Lake has noticeably decreased compared to Bay Trail and even Braswell (Braswell disappointed us somewhat in this regard, but Apollo Lake corrected the first impression of 14 nm) , which already looked good against the background of desktop processors. Now it’s even better: a full bundle of SoC, board and memory already fits into an average of 9 W, and the minimum power consumption (not in idle time, but during the execution of quite meaningful tasks) has decreased even more radically. In general, in terms of «absolute efficiency» is also progress. And the performance is higher. How does this affect energy efficiency?

We decided to add a couple more desktop Pentiums to the G2130 for clarity. As you can see, it was energy efficiency that Intel has been working on in recent years: progress in the field of performance is small, but processors spend less and less energy to perform the same work. It got to the point that «atomic» platforms, for all their absolute efficiency, began to lose in efficiency to desktop ones — they worked too slowly. Their use remained justified where it was necessary to somehow fit into a dozen watts or less. But if there was no such need, but the buyer had a desire to get the maximum “return per watt”, the choice was obvious. Now — not quite: desktop platforms are still faster, but you already need to evaluate how much high net performance is mandatory for you (with all the side effects in the load).

iXBT Game Benchmark 2016

To save time and space, we will give exactly one diagram — a summary game score that we introduced this year just to simplify comparisons of different platforms that do not claim to be a serious gaming application. Here we also added the results of more modern desktop Pentiums.

As you can see, the performance of integrated graphics of budget Intel processors has been steadily increasing over the past five years — and much faster than that of processor cores. True (and this is also not news), LGA1151 models are poorly suited for games — much worse than any AMD desktop APU. Actually, it makes sense to consider the latter as an entry-level video card, which simply has one or two processor modules built into it. What for? And to do without buying discrete processor 🙂 Intel has the opposite approach: processor cores are still in the leading positions. The GPU is improving, but first of all, it is needed in order not to buy a discrete graphics card — at least sometimes. Which, in general, makes the proposals of AMD and Intel incomparable in a good way and simplifies the choice.

As for our main heroes of today, formally Celeron J3455 predecessors smashed to smithereens . But in fact — even the old guys under LGA1155 even coped with games better. More precisely, in general, they did not cope in any way, but «atomic» platforms are still even more than none . The miracle did not happen, the list of games available to the owner of such a system will be somewhat more extensive than before, but it will include game projects of all the same classes: either completely “without graphics”, or ten years ago, or both at once 🙂

Total

So, what do we have in the bottom line? The new Apollo Lake SoCs have become noticeably faster and noticeably more economical. Since this happened at the same time, they also became much more energy efficient: the cumulative effect is comparable at least with the transition from LGA1155 directly to LGA1151. In general, as mentioned above, there have not been such one-time «breakthroughs» in the processor part since the days of Sandy Bridge, even if we count «full tick-tocks» — taking into account the actual disappointment from Braswell.

However, it does not follow from this that in the near future it will be possible to replace Core with Atom — just as in due time, instead of Pentium 4, various Core 2 Duo/Quad suddenly «bloomed» all over the market. Perhaps, however, the scope of «atomic» cores will expand a little again — up to the resumption of their use in server processors (one of the representatives of the Denverton line was even announced in January, but the C3338 is only a dual-core model, and the «old» plans for this family said about the number of cores up to 16). Again, budget laptops and compact desktop computers on the new platform may become somewhat more popular — for example, to replace the old “non-compact” ones in cases where the performance of the latter was enough, but they have to be changed (say, due to failure).