Intel Core 5 320, a Wildcat Lake CPU designed for budget laptops, has been tested, showcasing good numbers against its competition.
Intel Wildcat Lake, Core 5 320, Shows ST and MT Wins Against Current-Gen Chips While Offering 50% iGPU Performance With Just A Quarter of The Xe3 Cores
Wildcat Lake should turn out to be a surprise hit from Intel if OEMs build upon the reference design and specs. Just recently, we saw a stunning reference design from Intel, featuring an aluminum body, stunning colors, and decent specs for an everyday PC.
Now, we have the first independent benchmarks coming from PassMark, and the results are quite good. Starting with the single-core performance, the Intel Core 5 320, a Wildcat Lake chip with just 6 cores, only two of which are P-cores, scored 4047 points while running at a 4.6 GHz clock speed. The E-Cores operate at a lower 3.4 GHz clock speed at max.
In multi-core tests, the CPU scored 15,222 points, which once again is impressive given its 6-core and 6-thread design. Now, Wildcat Lake is being touted as Intel's answer to Apple's MacBook Neo. PassMark also includes results for the Apple A18 Pro, the chip used by the MacBook Neo.
The Apple A18 Pro and Intel Core 5 320 "Wildcat Lake" CPU deliver nearly the same performance in the single-core tests, but as you switch over to multi-core, the Intel Core 5 320 leads by a decent 27%. If we compare Wildcat Lake with the A19 Pro, the new Apple chip leads by an impressive 28% in single-core tests but falls behind slightly in the multi-core tests.
Comparing the Wildcat Lake chip to existing Intel and AMD solutions, we see that the chip single-handedly outpaces the Core Ultra 5 236V "Lunar Lake" and Ryzen AI 5 340 "Strix Point" in single-core tests. Both of these chips do edge out the Core 5 320 in MT due to Lunar Lake offering more cores (6 vs 8), & AMD AI offering more threads (6 vs 12).
2 Xe3 Cores Perform Like 4 Xe2 Cores
In terms of graphics performance, the Wildcat Lake CPU is equipped with just 2 Xe3 cores, but even with a quarter of the cores as the current Arc offerings, such as Lunar Lake with 8 Xe2, the chip performance drops by just 50%. So you are still getting half the performance, which means that the integrated graphics is comparable to a 4Xe2 solution, which is better than expected.
We should also point out that the Core 5 320 is one of the entry-level chips in the Wildcat Lake "Core Series 3" family. The higher-end models run at faster clocks, for both the CPU & GPU, and users should expect even better performance with those SKUs.
Given these numbers, I think pricing and product designs will play a major role in customers buying Wildcat Lake platforms. The performance is there, and until Apple rolls out its updated Neo with the A19 chips, Wildcat Lake offers nice competition, and we can expect Intel to continue to offer more solutions for the budget market now that Apple is doubling down its effort in the mainstream PC market.
News Source: @x86deadandback
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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