The Kabini Deal: Can AMD Improve the Quality of Mainstream PCs with Its Latest APU?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 24, 2013 1:45 PM ESTFinal Words
AMD’s family of cat-cores began their lives as higher performing alternatives to Intel’s Atom. Ambition (and a desire for higher ASPs) drove them to compete with the lower end of Intel’s Pentium lineup. The Jaguar based Kabini APU continues the trend and even aims higher up the product stack, with the highest spec Kabini APU aiming for Intel’s Core i3.
When it comes to GPU performance, Kabini is absolutely there. Depending on the benchmark we either saw parity, a slight disadvantage or large advantage for Kabini’s integrated Radeon HD 8830 compared to Intel’s 22nm HD Graphics.
On the CPU front, we already established that Kabini runs laps around Brazos and Atom. The point of today’s article however, was to find out if comparing to a $320 notebook based on a Pentium 2020M would change things. The answer ends up being, not really. Kabini is very efficient for what it is, but the Ivy Bridge cores simply have better single threaded performance. Even a lower clocked/lower TDP Pentium part would maintain a healthy single threaded CPU performance advantage.
Whether that CPU performance advantage matters really depends on your usage model. Anyone who’d be happy with a Cortex A15 based Chromebook for example would likely be just fine with Kabini under the hood of their next notebook.
Where Kabini excels however is in its power consumption. Better battery life than a Brazos based notebook is a given, but in our earlier comparison we even noted better battery life than a 17W Ultrabook. I suspect AMD is indeed being a little conservative with its 15W TDP rating for the A4-1500.
That brings us to the deal that AMD is offering OEMs. A lower cost, lower power APU that’s better than Atom/Brazos, comparable to Pentium in GPU performance but behind it in single threaded CPU performance. Historically PC OEMs have taken the cost savings AMD offered them and delivered a lower priced system, my hope with Kabini is that we’ll finally get something different.
Kabini alone offers a power advantage, which itself may be enough, but if an OEM were to take Kabini's cost savings and put the money towards a better LCD or better storage that could significantly alter the balance of things. I agree with what Jarred said in his conclusion yesterday: "Give me a reasonable Ultrabook-style chassis (or maybe a dockable tablet) with Kabini and a decent quality 1080p touchscreen and do it at the right price and there are plenty of people that will jump at the offer."
The traditional approach would be for an OEM to offer a Kabini system at a lower price than a Pentium based system. The Kabini system might offer better battery life, while the Pentium machine delivers better single-threaded CPU performance. Should that same OEM offer both systems at the same price, but give the Kabini an appreciably better display, I think many users would be willing to overlook the difference in CPU performance entirely.
As it stands, I like Kabini. It’s a good part that could make for the foundation of a nice, affordable ultraportable system. The best selling notebook on Amazon remains the Cortex A15 based Samsung Chromebook. The second best selling? A Core i3 based ASUS X202E. Consumers are clearly willing to sacrifice CPU performance if the price is right and the rest of the machine/experience is well designed. I see no reason that a Kabini based platform couldn’t be up there as well. It’s just up to an enlightened OEM to do the right thing with what AMD has given them.
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calyth - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
Not everyone wants to type with a tablet. I've tried full size iPad, or a 7" android one with SwiftKey for tablet. Both makes me want to chuck it against the wall.When you factor in a half decent tablet keyboard to go with that tablet, it's not all that different.
Flunk - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
What you need to do is imagine your mother wants a new laptop and would like a nice little light one for email, surfing and maybe writing letters in a word processor. That's just one use, there are a lot of people who aren't computer enthusiasts that these will be great for.Granseth - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
I think it would be great in a student laptop as well. It could easily survive a day at campus on battery and still have enough power for normal usage like words, edocs, mail and such. Lets just hope somebody gives it a good enough screen and wrapping to be usable in that environment.axien86 - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
HP already announced new 10-point touchscreen laptops based on AMD Jaguar chips that are incredibly priced at $399 MSRP. These are going to sell in the millions.chizow - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Just odd to me is all, I figured there were tablets in that sub-$300 range, and something like Surface or various hybrids at that $500 and above price point. I guess this is going to go for super cheap laptop/hybrids in the sub-$300 range to compete with tablets again?I thought this was going to be more in that $500+ bracket with good enough CPU perf and much better GPU than Intel, but that doesn't seem to be the case?
thebeastie - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
I don't think you understand the core of what Anand likes about the Kabini, its going to be in a tablet that people can use all day with out having to recharge unlike a comparable Intel solution which would use ALL the battery in half the time, which means you need to recharge it twice a day type scenario...Kabini gives similar performance that can go ALL day.
Jaybus - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Similar GPU performance, but not similar CPU. Single-core performance is still very relevant, in spite of the marketing hoopla. And the Intel has twice the single-core performance, so will be snappier. So, no surprise. Half the power and so half the performance. Both suck at games anyway, and at this price point who cares? If the AMD would have similar CPU performance at half the power, even at the expense of GPU performance, they would be a hands down winner. But that is probably not possible, so they are leveraging their superior GPU performance per Watt. But playing games in slow motion is not impressing anyone. A $300 netbook 2.0 could easily get by with 2D graphics only if it was snappy and the battery lasted all day. I don't see much use for a slow GPU with an even slower CPU. At least the Intel has a marginally fast enough CPU, but it sucks down power. Neither are adequate.HisDivineOrder - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
Too expensive to sell in the millions.duploxxx - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
that 10" in there previous netbook was also a selling hit. Once that brazos was introduced by HP, many vendors stopt offering the atom based netbooks in volume.for the rest kabine perf wise is fine for its market intention. Those who bark about unusable daily use have no idea about what was brazos in usage when paired even with a 7.2k rpm hd. THey probbaly only worked with nice atom's....
Its a bit pitty that turbo mode doesn't work here. They either need to fix that in next update or need to bring a dual core higher ghz bin in the same TDP.
warezme - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
I have to agree the graphics for either Intel or AMD on these platforms are abysmal. I still have an old laptop from 5 years ago now serving up as a media server that has an Nvidia 9800GTXm and it used to pull around a 10,000 score on 3Dmark06 from what I can recall and this was years and years ago. Granted that was discrete but I would have thought things would have improved immensely on the integrated side by now.