The Pentium N3540 is an excellent central processing unit for entry-level mobile computers

The Pentium N3540 was positioned by Intel as an excellent processor for notebooks, netbooks and entry-level tablets. The chip itself was released in 2014 and at the current time from the position of technical specifications continues to be relevant for its niche. Another important feature of this product is its practically flawless energy efficiency.

Socket

Like any other central processor of the Bay Trail range, the Pentium N3540 can be installed in the FCBGA1170 socket. The review of existing mobile personal computers on its base indicates that this CPU in most cases is simply decoupled on the motherboard. Due to this, the process of production of such computers is simplified, but at the same time, repair or modernization of such equipment is entirely excluded.

Technology

A fairly fresh technological process was used in the manufacture of a semiconductor crystal Pentium N3540. Its characteristics indicate that it corresponds completely to the norms of 22nm tolerance. Its key feature is the three-dimensional arrangement of transistors. Modern CPUs are manufactured according to the norms of 14nm, and this technological process was mastered next after 22nm. If you compare the hero of this review with the products of a competing company, it becomes obvious that AMD is far behind in this respect. Its products for this niche are made according to the norms of 28nm. Therefore, their energy efficiency is worse, and the crystal size is much larger.

Cache

Pentium N3540 is equipped with a cache memory system from 2 levels. It is this nuance that significantly reduces its speed. The total size of its first level is 224 KB. It is divided into 4 parts of 56 KB. Each of these segments is tied to a specific computational unit of the CPU. In turn, these 56 KB are divided into 2 parts. One of them, at 24 Kb, is used to store the processed data, and the remaining 32 KB is used for instructions of the CPU program code. The total size of the second level cache is 2 MB. It is divided into 2 parts of 1 MB, which again are tied to a specific pair of computational modules.

RAM

The controller RAM, as well as other CPUs of this manufacturer, is included in the semiconductor chip chip. It supports dual-channel mode of operation and is oriented to work in combination with the DDR3L 1333 slats. Only in this case the typical "memory slats" will certainly not be met. Most manufacturers try to save as much as possible on the production of mobile computers. This leads to the fact that the RAM chips are decoupled from the system board. On the one hand, this approach allows to reduce the cost of the device, and on the other - excludes completely in the future the repair and modernization.

Thermal package

The manufacturer's declared heat package for this processor is 7.5W. If we take into account the fact that the composition of this silicon product, except for 4 computational modules, also includes a graphic accelerator, and a set of chips of system logic with a RAM controller, it turns out to be quite a fantastic value. Such a CPU can work even with a passive cooling system. But such a high energy efficiency of the processor is achieved due to a decrease in performance.

Frequencies

There is no fixed operating frequency in the Pentium N3540. Reviews of mobile PC owners on its basis indicate that it can dynamically change it depending on the complexity of the task (or even several tasks in the case of multi-threaded work) and the degree of heating of the silicon crystal. The minimum value in this case is 2.1 GHz, and the maximum is 2.6 GHz.

Number of threads and cores

The Pentium N3540 includes 4 independent compute units. The number of processing threads of the program code is equal to the number of physical cores, i.e. 4. That is, the proprietary technology from Intel in the person of NT is not supported in this case and information in 2 threads can not be processed on one core.

Graphic arts

As noted earlier, the integrated video accelerator is part of the silicon crystal Pentium N3540. Reviews Experts say that it was borrowed from the chips of the family IVI BRIDGE. It is even called identically - HD Graphics. Only here the technical specifications indicate that this is a stripped-down version of that graphics adapter. The minimum frequency of the GPU for this case is 313 MHz. If the task is more complicated, then the accelerator frequency automatically increases to 896 MHz. This allows you to dynamically change the energy efficiency and performance of the graphics solution, depending on the degree of complexity of the task being solved at the current time.

And what happens as a result? Owners opinion

A very balanced entry-level product was the Pentium N3540. It is great for organizing a notebook or an entry-level netbook. Its computational capabilities are quite enough to solve a wide range of the most simple problems. Well, something more from such budget-class devices can not be expected.