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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
126 Comments
View All Comments
MikeMurphy - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I'm excited to see this in an upgradeable NUC form factor.jardows2 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Please, someone make a thin-mITX for this platform. This is going to be a limited use platform anyway, so there is no reason to put in the full gamut of I/O on the back.jabber - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Mmm vertically stacked and the size of a paperback book.But whats this...they put the VGA socket at the top! Noooooooooo!
No analogue audio out on the back, just at the front! Noooooooooo!
Yep seen that.
macs - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Sorry Anandtech but this is not a good review.Where is power consumption data? Comparison with Intel Haswell G1820 (really affordable Haswell chip)? Htpc quality? Older generation (amd e-350)??
Communism - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
They put the newfangled AMD part in the best possible light since they can't afford AMD to be mad at them since AMD pays the bills :PDoes make the a mockery of this Article that it doesn't even include the Intel Haswell G1820 that is it's real competition.
MSRP Intel Haswell G1820 is 42 USD
You can get an H81 board for 49 USD
You can also have real upgradability, since you can go up to a 4670 if you want to.
CiccioB - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I agree, having a sponsored section on the site isn't really a best thing to avoid any suspicion about bias or favouritism. Any glitch in a review can be seen as a favour to the sponsor. And none will ever know if that's true or not.BTW, I have an Atom D510 (dual physical cores with HT) ITX server which is on 24/24 7/7 used for P2P, backup and some script, stotage and database server. No GFX capacity needed (it is connected to the main PC through Remote Desktop thus "sharing" one of the monitors).
What would be the best solution to replace it if it will eventually die tomorrow?
That Pentium J1800@10W seems very good. Is there something better than that? Consider that power consumption and related fan noise are critical, being always on in my bedroom.
macs - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I have a similar setup with an AMD e350 itx board. I'm trying to understand if I should upgrade to a newer platform but this review didn't help.Main concern is power consumption, it would be interesting comparing Kabini, BayTrail D and low end Haswell
Communism - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I can understand not doing the Power Consumption tests, since their standard benching platforms are "Enthusiast" and "Overclocking" motherboards, resulting in higher power consumption of the boards masking the true TDP of the CPU/GPU as a result of the additional chips on the board adding other functionality.They would have to use very sparse basic boards to make the comparison anywhere close to realistic.
jospoortvliet - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
Reviews on other sites show AMD consistently beating baytrail at virtually the same active power envelope and much lower idle. Baytrail offers no advantage whatsoever so you can cross that off the list already 😎Beany2013 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Try reading the article rather than just looking at the pretty pictures:"As mentioned in our test setup, the benchmark results in this preliminary article are only a small fraction of our normal coverage. Due to other commitments we were unable to run every test on all comparison systems, but we have the other Athlon and Sempron APUs as well as comparable Intel counterparts coming in for review."
Also, the title - Review *Part 1*.
More numbers, compared to competing parts from intel, will be upcoming. It says it in the article - at least twice. It's not ATs problem if you weren't gifted with the good grace to actually read an article before accusing the author of being a shill/being biased/being on the payroll.
Steven R