Intel Pentium N3710: Four Cores That Lost to Two

The Intel Pentium N3710 was released in 2016 with four cores and a TDP of just 6 W. For budget laptops, this made it possible to combine a compact chassis, low power consumption, and fanless operation. But that efficiency came at a cost: the dual-core Pentium 4405U with its Skylake architecture outperforms the N3710 by about 55% in PassMark.

The difference is explained not by the number of cores, but by their architecture and permitted power consumption. Even in 2016, the N3710 was intended for basic tasks, and ten years later its capabilities are limited by its outdated platform and weak single-threaded performance.

Architecture: Four Efficient Airmont Cores

The Pentium N3710 belongs to the Braswell family and uses the 14 nm Airmont architecture, developed from Silvermont. Its four cores operate without Hyper-Threading and process four threads simultaneously.

The base clock is 1.6 GHz, while the maximum frequency in Intel Burst mode is 2.56 GHz. The processor has 2 MB of shared L2 cache and supports up to 8 GB of dual-channel DDR3L-1600 memory with bandwidth of 25.6 GB/s.

The 6 W TDP made it possible to build passively cooled laptops, but it did not guarantee continuous operation at the maximum frequency. Under sustained loads, performance depended on the thermal conditions and the limitations of the specific device.

Compared with the Pentium N3700, the new model differed primarily in its higher Burst frequency: 2.56 versus 2.4 GHz. The cores themselves remained unchanged, so there was no significant performance increase.

Performance: Why Two Skylake Cores Are Faster Than Four Airmont Cores

The most revealing comparison for the N3710 is with the dual-core Pentium 4405U. Both processors were intended for affordable laptops, but Intel used different approaches in them: efficient Airmont cores versus more powerful Skylake cores.

Average PassMark CPU Mark scores as of October 2026. Results may change as more tests are added.

The Pentium N3710 is 10% faster than its N3700 predecessor and 17% faster than the Celeron N3160. However, the Pentium 4405U is 55% faster despite having only two physical cores. In the PassMark single-threaded test, its advantage is even greater-about 77%.

Four Airmont cores cannot compensate for the difference in per-core performance. At the same time, the comparison is not equivalent in terms of power consumption: the Pentium 4405U has a 15 W TDP versus 6 W for the N3710 and is designed for a different thermal envelope.

The difference is even more pronounced compared with the Intel N100, released in 2023. It also has four cores, four threads, and a rated TDP of 6 W, but its PassMark score is 3.8 times higher. This is not a direct successor to the N3710, but it illustrates how much low-power processor performance has increased. The same TDP does not, however, mean the same actual power consumption.

Cinebench R15: How Much the Specific Laptop Matters

Results from retail systems show that even the same Pentium N3710 can operate at different speeds. The differences are particularly noticeable in the Cinebench R15 multi-threaded test.

Three of the four models score between 141 and 152 points in Cinebench R15 Multi-Core, while the HP Pavilion x360 scores only 105. Without additional measurements, this deviation cannot confidently be attributed to cooling alone.

The Single-Core results vary much less, from 39 to 42 points. It is precisely the low speed of an individual core that limits applications unable to distribute their workloads efficiently across four threads.

Geekbench 6

The more modern Geekbench 6 makes it possible to evaluate the N3710 using software workloads different from Cinebench rendering.

Individual Geekbench 6 measurements, not average scores. The Acer was tested under Linux, while the Dell models were tested under Windows.

Even the best result among the selected devices does not exceed 211 points in Single-Core. In Multi-Core, the processor reaches 634 points, but four cores do not provide high performance in demanding tasks.

Intel HD Graphics 405: Even Older Games Are a Struggle

The Pentium N3710 is equipped with the Gen8 Intel HD Graphics 405 integrated GPU. It has 16 execution units (EUs), operates at 400-700 MHz, and uses shared system memory.

In 3DMark 11 Performance GPU, the Acer Swift 1 scored 496 points. For comparison, the HD Graphics 505 in the Acer Aspire ES1-332 with a Pentium N4200 scored 583 points, which is 18% higher.

Real-world gaming tests on the Acer Swift 1 show the graphics limitations even more clearly.

Notebookcheck results for the Acer Swift 1 SF114-31-P6F6.

Dota 2 Reborn produces around 35 FPS at minimum settings, but Skyrim and Battlefield 4 do not even reach 30 FPS. Rise of the Tomb Raider, released in the same year as the processor, runs at just 7 FPS.

Thus, the HD Graphics 405 was already too weak for demanding games when the N3710 was released. Its primary purpose was displaying images, playing video, and handling undemanding graphics workloads.

The graphics unit supports hardware-accelerated decoding of H.264 and H.265, including high-resolution video. However, modern streaming services may use other codecs, whose processing is handled by the CPU.

Laptops with the N3710: What Buyers Were Paying For

The processor appeared in both basic home laptops and compact models intended for education. With the same CPU, device prices varied considerably because of differences in storage, chassis, and equipment.

Historical prices for the tested configurations, not current 2026 offers.

The Acer TravelMate cost significantly more than the HP, even though both used the same processor. Its equipment included an SSD, a compact chassis intended for educational institutions, and Windows Pro. The HP offered a less expensive configuration with a mechanical hard drive.

In everyday use, the difference between an SSD and an HDD could be more noticeable than a few additional CPU points in Cinebench. A fast storage device reduces system startup and file-opening times, but it does not speed up the computations performed by the Airmont cores themselves.

What Remains of the Pentium N3710 in 2026

Ten years later, the N3710’s main problem is not just its processor frequency. Laptops with this chip were often equipped with 4 GB of RAM and slow storage devices, while the platform itself supports no more than 8 GB of DDR3L.

Today, such a device can still be used for text documents, simple spreadsheets, local video playback with supported codecs, and undemanding applications. Multitasking, demanding websites, and video conferencing quickly expose its lack of computing power.

Software support is another limitation. Standard Windows 10 support ended on October 14, 2025, and the N3710 is not included in the official list of processors compatible with Windows 11. For an existing laptop, a lightweight Linux distribution may be worth considering, after checking support for Wi-Fi, audio, and other components.

Installing an SSD and increasing the memory, if the specific model supports upgrades, can improve responsiveness. However, this will not change the processor’s performance.

Conclusion

The Intel Pentium N3710 shows how misleading the number of cores in a specification can be. The quad-core Airmont loses to the dual-core Skylake, while the Intel N100 with the same rated 6 W TDP outperforms it by almost four times in PassMark.

At the time, the N3710 made it possible to produce inexpensive, silent laptops for basic tasks. Today, the advantages of this platform no longer compensate for its low performance and limited software support. A surviving device can still be used, but buying a laptop with a Pentium N3710 in 2026 is not advisable.