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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nunomoreira10 - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
try turning off turbo-boostit did wonders for mine
select 99% maxprocesserspeed on power management
ssj3gohan - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Where did you get that platform power consumption from? Because I've done some pretty extensive measurements on my own laptop (a not-really-ultrabook Medion, i5-3317U, UM77 chipset, 4GB RAM, Samsung 840, crappy display on eDP) and I got an idle total platform power of 3.3W. Of course that's with a 3.0W TDP UM77 chipset and not one of the 4.1W TDP non-ultramobile chipsets, but I don't think the gap should be *that* big! You're saying 8.14W for your Pentium 2020M setup, there must be some power hog or some software setting that you missed.DanNeely - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
It's a 35W CPU in a $3xx system; unlike your not-really-an-ultrabook I doubt power consumption was a major vendor concern.repoman27 - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
"As a more fully integrated SoC, Kabini’s IO duties are handled by an on-die North Bridge."On die northbridge is nothing new. Kabini has an on die FCH—both the north and south bridges are now integrated.
repoman27 - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Oops, sorry DanNeely. That was supposed to be a comment, not a reply. Still getting used to the new site layout.thuejk - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
> There are two non-negotiables in building a PC these days: the cost of Intel silicon and the cost of the Windows license.The Windows license is becoming a bit optional. With Steam on Linux, lots of indie games with Linux support, and wine emulation (Starcraft II!), running Linux is becoming possible for gamers willing to limit their game library a bit.
Calinou__ - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
It always was optional. There were lots of games before there was Steam, too.But well, you know, that's Anandtech. If it's non-commercial then it sucks. 8)
Death666Angel - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
100% agreed with your conclusion. While cheaper-than-Pentium Kabini laptops would be okay (and will happen), I would like to see a Kabini laptop priced the same with a slightly larger battery, better/higher-res display and maybe more RAM or a small-ish SSD at the same price than competing Intel based laptops.Gaugamela - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
This is more like it. The previous review was just pitiful. Considering that Notebookcheck.net had a much more extensive review, Notebookreview had an awesome review with glowing conclusions to Kabini, that Tomshardware managed to make a comparison with a 35W Pentium and an i3 Ivy Bridge you guys just had to do damage control.Kabini is a great piece of hardware. Super efficient and with enough performance for the majority of users not to notice an impact in daily use. Especially if options with an SSD exist.
Considering how it competes with a 35W Pentium and how efficient it is (it puts to shame the Ivy Bridge i3) this is an awesome chip. And then there's the matter of price. Considering this is a SoC, it is much cheaper than anything that Intel has to offer.
So, yes AMD has a great product here. And you guys will have to change your tune and stop using them as punching bags.
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
[Rolls eyes]The previous review was under a severe time crunch, and while we'd love to have performance scores from every noteworthy CPU/APU out there (hello ULV Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Trinity...) the fact is no one ever sent us laptops with those parts, and nearly all of the laptops we've reviewed over the past two years have gone back to the manufacturers.
This follow-up isn't about damage control, it's about hoping -- praying! -- that the OEMs won't do with Kabini what they've done with every other low-cost APU out there. I'm skeptical that we can get leopard to change their spots (i.e. budget laptop manufacturers to give us decent displays and chassis to go with the Kabini/Temash SoCs), but we shall see. For the price, Kabini has something to offer, but history suggests that most OEMs will take the cost savings and cut corners everywhere else to create mediocre laptops. The best CPU/APU/SoC in the world married to a lousy design is not a compelling product.
The simple fact of the matter is that you can't handle a the reality of the price/performance equation. Kabini laptops (and Temash tablets) will need to offer either better features/quality and/or lower cost than Core i3 in order to truly impress. They'll likely sell fine regardless, just like Brazos, but speaking of Brazos I actually managed to borrow a C-50 from a friend today, and I had forgotten just how bad the experience can be. E-350 was tolerable; C-50, not so much. Compared to C-50, the A4-5000 is amazingly fast! That's the problem with living in a vacuum where you only look at the comparisons a product wins: there are a lot of options out there to consider.
If there are two laptops with the same design, features, and components at the same price, and one has Kabini A4-5000 while the other has i3-3217U, it's a tossup. We know i3-3217U will have better CPU performance, and in many cases it will have better GPU performance as well. Kabini should have a slight edge in power use. Depending on the user's needs, either laptop could be a good fit, but personally I'd take Core i3 with HD 4000 and slightly worse battery life since I rarely need 7+ hours off the mains. On the other hand, if the Kabini option has a better LCD, or an SSD, that would be enough to give it the nod. This is exactly what we said in the original review, but you keep overlooking that fact.