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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Gaugamela - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
I'm fully aware that Kabini can't beat an i3. But you should also be fully aware that AMD in their slides doesn't point the A4-5000 as competing with i3 Ivy Bridge but with Pentiums. They mention the 25W A6 as competition for the i3's. Would that APU be competitive with the i3 still in performance/power consumption/GPU/price? I remain a bit more skeptical of that. Will the OEMs use it in compelling designs instead of using it in the crappiest notebooks in the market? I certainly hope so, just like you.As for what the OEMs do, the only one that used a AMD APU in a premium case was Asus with their U38N and U38DT. It's a 13,3'' Zenbook with Trinity APUs. It has a Full HD multi-touch IPS displays, aluminum body, and offers a lower price than comparable ultrabooks from Intel (obviously with lower CPU performance). I would expect for a Kabini/Richland refresh though. What I would love to see, is if you want that type of notebooks so much ask OEMs to send them to you for review if they're available.
In my case, I am not blind and if I had to pick a cheap notebook I would go for the Asus x202e. I always go for high performance notebooks (that's why my picks have always been Intel/Nvidia notebooks). However, while you may get the Asus x202e in the US for 400$ in my country it's available for 600€! A comparable Kabini notebook would cost probably 400-450€ since it doesn't have the Intel sticker.
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
Not sure if you get Vizio offerings, but Vizio looks to have some compelling Richland (maybe Kabini as well?) touchscreen laptops launching soon. We'll certainly try to get them, but sadly a lot of OEMs are very particular over what laptops they send for review, hence the lack of i3 ULV, Pentium, Celeron, Trinity ULV, etc. If I had the money, I'd just go buy the damn things for review, but that's not generally practical.Gaugamela - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
Unfortunately there's no Vizio offerings in Europe. :(They are beautiful and seem to be one of the few OEMs that use AMD APUs in atractive designs similar to Intel ultrabooks.
With the trend that we are seeing, it would be interesting to see more reviews of low-power APUs.
kyuu - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
Do they? The recent refresh used Trinity, and they haven't even started shipping the 14" Trinity model yet. Plus the prices ballooned to over a grand for the cheapest model.Is there another refresh coming up?
dbwells - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
I think the big story here is that AMD is meeting and sometimes besting Intel IVB parts on performance per watt. I cannot remember the last time that happened. Or am I misunderstanding something? If they can scale up Jaguar, they might really have something here. It's kinda like the second coming of Core, while Barcelona and its progeny are the corresponding repeat of NetBurst.Bobs_Your_Uncle - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
My take-away is much the same as yours: AMD is punching it's way back into the game, which now also happens to feature more, (as well as many more moving), targets. (The "moving ≈ mobile ≈ more rapidly paced product cycle" pun is intended, though as I've advised my kids, if you have to explain it, well then it's just not funny!)I'm a relative late comer to the ranks of tech obsessed / tech aficionados. Since my arrival, maybe 4-5 years ago, Intel has always been the widely dominant force, though I always enjoy rooting for an underdog; in this case AMD.
My desire to root for AMD has increased significantly within the last couple of months, due in large part to several Anand-authored profiles on new arrivals, or employees returning, to AMD. This rationale for wishing AMD well was further solidified by a brief history of AMD, written by Andrew Cunningham & posted in Ars Technica at the following link:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/amd-on-rop...
Lacking extensive personal knowledge with which to gauge or critique the article, it at least gave me a greater sense of the significant role occupied by AMD & their summary impact within the industry. With some much valued platform infrastructure still in place, the recent influx of quite formidable talent & experience is, I think, cause for at least guarded optimism over AMD's fortunes.
tipoo - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
The scale up is easier said than done, scaling down is much easier. Jaguar can only clock to 2GHz due to the architecture, they'd have to significantly change it to scale that up, and once they do the IPC may suffer.nunomoreira10 - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
Your right, if they could just double the performance per core, doubling everything, they could have a great mobile cpu for everything. they sure have an exess of tdp to use.I always wonder how hard it would be to do that, but im sure it´s easier to say then do.
takeship - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
Any chance Anand that you could swap some performance memory in for that single stick, say something with 8-8-8 24 or 9-9-9 27 timings, and see if we get any graphical boost out of ti?woofersus - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
I wonder if we could see one of these in a lower priced x86 Surface, given the market's clear preference for the full version of Windows and the high price of the original Surface Pro. Seems like a Kabini chip could make for a nice intermediary.