The Desktop Kabini Review Part 1: AMD Athlon 5350 (AM1) Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 9, 2014 8:00 AM ESTThe Competition
It is no secret that AMD is attempting to fire a shot across Intel’s Bay Trail. The low power x86 desktop space is almost all AMD vs. Intel (VIA still produces x86 parts), and the socketed direction for AMD’s Kabini is a new approach in this area. The claim of low power, quad core and low cost is something that entry-level desktop integrators might find hard to ignore – in fact AMD have stated that the feedback from their Latin America integrators for an upgradeable Kabini solution is very good.
While we have not necessarily looked at Bay Trail from a desktop perspective, there are products on the market today. In the UK for example, it is easy enough to purchase an Intel Celeron J1800-based motherboard and have it shipped next-day delivery.
AMD considers the Athlon 5350/5150 parts (quad core, 2.05 GHz and 1.6 GHz) in line with Intel's Pentium J2850/J2900, and the Sempron 3850 with the J1850/J1900 - all Silvermont based SoCs. In fact, I think the 5350 vs the J1900 is a better fit:
| AMD Athlon 5350 vs. Intel Celeron J1900 | ||||
| Athlon 5350 | Celeron J1900 | |||
| CPU Architecture | Jaguar | Silvermont | ||
| CPU Cores | 4 | 4 | ||
| CPU Frequency | 2.05 GHz |
2.0 GHz 2.4 GHz Turbo |
||
| GPU Cores | 128 SPs | 4 EUs | ||
| GPU Frequency | 600 MHz | 688 MHz | ||
| Memory Interface | 1 x 64-bit | 2 x 64-bit | ||
| Memory Frequency | 1600 MHz | 1333 MHz | ||
| L2 Cache | 2 MB | 2 MB | ||
| TDP | 25 W | 10 W | ||
| Price | $55 | $82 | ||
The big issue that AMD will point out is the price of the J1900. One of AMD’s big selling points will be the price of an APU and a motherboard, which as we discussed earlier should stretch from $56 to $90 depending on the APU/motherboard. On ark.intel.com, Intel does list the tray price of the J1900 as $82, however you can find a motherboard with integrated J1900 at Newegg for $92. Now either the motherboard manufacturer is getting a good deal on the CPU below tray price (most likely), or Intel is subsiding the cost, or the tray price is incorrect. We can only speculate, but it does mean that the Athlon 5350 and J1900 square off in terms of cost.
For CPU core counts and frequency, the 5350 and J1900 are closely matched with both being quad core parts at ~2.0 GHz, although the J1900 can boost up to 2.4GHz. AMD likely holds the GPU advantage with its R3 graphics/Radeon HD 8400 compared to Intel's 4 EU HD Graphics. With the Athlon there is a higher supported memory frequency, but only a 64-bit wide memory interface. That might hamper the IGP in our testing, and provide memory limited benchmarks an easy ride on the J1900. There's a pretty substantial TDP difference between the two as well, with Intel holding the theoretical power advantage. Intel does make a 20W Silvermont based SKU, the Atom C2750, although that is an 8 core module aimed at servers and costs $171.
The Test
Our AM1 Kabini coverage will be in two parts due to time constraints. This first part of the review is to explain the ecosystem with some Athlon 5350 numbers to compare against other platforms including a couple of Bay Trail and older Intel parts. We aim to publish a second review next week with more numbers, specifically a wider range of Kabini APUs and the key battle of the 5350 against the J1900. We were unfortunate to not be able to source a J1900 in time for this launch.
Our main Kabini Test Setup is as follows:
| Test Setup | |
| CPU |
AMD Athlon 5350 Quad Core, 2.05 GHz |
| Motherboard | GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H |
| Memory | 2x4GB DDR3-1600 9-10-10 |
| SSD | SF-2281 |
| Power Supply | Antec High Current Pro 1200 |
| Graphics | Integrated |
| Graphics Drivers | 14.3 Beta |
For other platforms:
| Test Setup | |||||
| CPU | Motherboard | Platform |
Cores / Threads |
Frequency | IGP |
|
AMD A6-5200 |
ASRock IMB-A180-H |
Kabini | 4 | 2.0 GHz | HD 8400 |
|
Intel Celeron J1800 |
GIGABYTE J1800N-D2H |
Bay Trail | 2 | 2.4 GHz | HD (Ivy) |
|
Intel Atom C2750 |
ASRock C2750D4I |
Avoton | 8 | 2.4 GHz | None |
|
Intel Celeron G1101 |
MSI Big Bang Fuzion |
Nehalem | 2 | 2.3 GHz |
Not Tested no IGP outputs |
|
Intel Celeron G465 |
ASUS Maximus V Gene |
Sandy Bridge | 1 / 2 | 1.9 GHz | HD (Sandy) |
|
Intel Celeron G2030 |
ASUS Maximus V Gene |
Ivy Bridge | 2 | 3.0 GHz | HD (Ivy) |
Other results in this review were taken from our AMD Kaveri launch review.
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Medallish - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Indeed, I loved building one, but it's kind of hard to advertise it being insanely cheap, and advertising upgradeability, you are more likely to simply purchase something new entirely when upgrading, if they are able to upgrade AM1 CPU's greatly, like lets say the next Mullins or Beema fits in effortlessly and introduces new stuff like Dual Channel DP 12a, or HDMI 2.0, and it worked on older boards, then I would say AMD had a nice idea, but the question really comes down to, at this price point do people even care about upgradeability?mikato - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
The good thing is that if/when you do upgrade and get a Beema, you're upgrading both the graphics and the CPU, hopefully both significantly.mrdude - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I'm actually fond of AMD's APUs and their direction with respect to heterogenous computing (I think it'll succeed even if AMD goes out of business, personally), but I agree with you.Providing a socketed platform is great, but without a clear direction and upgrade path it's all for naught -- and I mean AMD needs to state that Beema will be available on X date and features Y improvements. Nobody with more than a few brain cells buys into a platform that offers nothing outside of 'wait and see.'
AMD also needs to come to grips with the fact that on-die GPUs aren't going to taken seriously until they can provide playable framerates at 1080p without substantially increasing platform cost. Kaveri does the first part very well, but the memory scaling and memory cost issue really hamstring the platform. Pushing for beefier graphics makes sense in the tablet space where Mullins is supposed to make headway, but on the laptop/desktop side it's next-to-worthless unless it can play modern titles at 720p or 1080p at medium settings.
And Kabini desperately needs an aggressive turbo core and dual-channel memory. Kanter's article shows a very potent little microarchitecture, but those two points are really holding it back.
I think Jaguar is a better microarchitecture than Steamroller, but it seems clear to me that AMD isn't giving it the sort of attention that I feel it deserves.
JDG1980 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Backtracking on GDDR5 for Kaveri was a big mistake. Without the added memory bandwidth, the iGPU is bottlenecked, and the result is that Kaveri barely offers any improvement over Richland at all.Musafir_86 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
-It's Mantle time!-On a serious note, please test any GCN 1.1 card (Bonaire & Hawaii), and also GCN 1.0 card with BF4 & Thief in Mantle mode, pretty please! Don't let that ×16 slot go to waste!
Regards.
otherwise - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Looking at those CPU benchmarks, I would argue if you're even considering using an external GPU with this system you should be looking elsewhere. It's not really cheaper than a low end celeron system; and even atom is beating it in CPU power.Flunk - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I don't think he wants to see how it performs because he's thinking of building a rig like that. It would however be a good way to see how the reduced CPU overhead of Mantle affects GPU performance.Medallish - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Honestly it would be kind of fun/interesting to see if Mantle will have an impact at such a low-end system, I mean likely the CPU will be bottlenecked simply using a 260x.munim - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
How does it work for everyday use? Web browsing, 1080p youtube, things of that nature?JDG1980 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
They don't bother testing that since any modern system will do it just fine.There were a couple of JavaScript benchmarks (SunSpider and WebXprt) at the bottom of the 'CPU Productivity' page.