It’s no secret that we at Tom’s Hardware are over the moon about everything Raspberry Pi, mainly the new Raspberry Pi 5. But if you’re unsure whether you want one for yourself, it helps to know how it compares against other machines on the market. Today, we’ve got a neat comparison from Explaining Computers over at YouTube, who shows off how well it stacks up against his Intel N100 mini PC.
A fight between Intel and Arm processors is at the core of this comparison. The N100 uses four E-cores and can reach up to 3.4 GHz. The Pi 5 uses a BCM2712 with four Arm Cortex A76 cores and can reach up to 2.4 GHz. It also has a dedicated video core, while the N100 comes with integrated Intel UHD graphics.
Explaining Computers has set up both machines to boot from an NVMe SSD for testing purposes. The Pi uses Crucial P3 Plus 500GB SSD, while the N100 utilizes a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB SSD. Both machines have 8GB of DDR4 RAM, but the Raspberry Pi 5 wields LPDDR4X-4267, whereas the Intel N100 system has DDR4-3200. The Pi 5 costs around $126, not including the SSD or case, while the N100 is priced around $187.
They were explaining Computers set up a few benchmarks to see how they compare when testing the CPU performance and video output. They use the same operating system—Ubuntu 23.10 to keep things fair. Right off the bat, the Pi 5 swooped in with a boot time of 24 seconds, while the N100 clocked in at 26 seconds. While they performed with similar results when testing the CPU’s ability to process events, it didn’t take long for the N100 to surpass the Pi when it came to rendering media in GIMP. While editing videos on the Pi 5 is more than feasible, the N100 easily handles the complex workload.
In the end, Explaining Computers confirmed that replacing his N100 with a Pi 5 would be possible without losing much performance. However, the N100 has more to offer in the way of connectivity. It also helps that the N100 has an x86 processor, opening the machine to a more comprehensive selection of operating systems. If you’re looking for something a little cheaper and comparable, the Raspberry Pi 5 is a viable contender. If you want to get a closer look at the benchmark details, check out the full video shared by Explaining Computers on YouTube.
