AMD AM1 Kabini Part 2: Athlon 5350/5150 and Sempron 3850/2650 Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 29, 2014 2:00 PM ESTThe Competition
Because AMD is the first x86 CPU manufacturer to move their tablet focused processors into the socketed market along with low-cost motherboards, Intel has no direct comparative product. We have to look to their Bay Trail-D SoC range which loses that upgradable functionality. Competition between AMD and Intel on this front is a tit-for-tat operation, with each company focusing on their different strengths. AMD’s integrated IGP aims to be more powerful than the equivalent Intel along with support for DDR3-1600 memory, as well as cheaper overall, however Intel can boast dual channel memory and a lower power output.
With all these differences between Kabini and Bay Trail, including price, power and cores/threads, it is hard to find Intel parts that accurately match each other. AMD has put the following in front of reviewers to provide a guide:
AMD consider the Athlon 5350/5150 parts (quad core, 2.05 GHz and 1.6 GHz) in line with the Intel Pentium J2850/J2900, and the Sempron 3850 with the J1850/J1900. For this Part 2 we were able to obtain full Celeron J1800 (dual core) and Celeron J1900 (quad core) Bay Trail-D parts for testing. Even though AMD puts the Athlon 5350 in the path of the J2900, the J2900 is primarily an OEM solution used by Acer. A single J2900 motherboard appeared on Newegg a week after we had packed up testing.
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 | 6 EUs | ||
| GPU Frequency | 600 MHz | 688 MHz | ||
| Memory Channels | Single | Dual | ||
| Memory Frequency | 1600 MHz | 1333 MHz | ||
| L2 Cache | 2 MB | 2 MB | ||
| TDP | 25 W | 10 W | ||
| Price | $59 | $82 | ||
Also we can now directly compare pricing. Take for example the two of the motherboards we had for this review, one J1900 and the other AM1 while equipping the system with an Athlon 5350:
GIGABYTE J1900N-D3V: $87 (Newegg)
GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H: $35 (Newegg)
AMD Athlon 5350: $65 (Newegg)
Totaling up the AMD components gives $100 vs $87 from Newegg, or £65 vs. £66 on Amazon UK, on the extreme high end of a Kabini AM1 setup. Pricing is also influenced slightly by quoting the boxed version of the APU, rather than the OEM pricing that AMD likes to quote.
Our test setup is a follows:
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | AMD Athlon 5350, Quad Core, 2.05 GHz |
| AMD Athlon 5150, Quad Core, 1.60 GHz | |
| AMD Sempron 3850, Quad Core, 1.30 GHz | |
| AMD Sempron 2650, Dual Core, 1.45 GHz | |
| Motherboard | GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H |
| Memory | 2x4GB DDR3-1600 9-10-10 |
| SSD | OCZ Vertex 3 |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W ZX Series |
| Graphics | Integrated |
| Graphics Drivers | 14.3 Beta |
Note that for our benchmark results we are also taking data from previous reviews done at AnandTech, including some of the higher powered mainstream systems. Over time we have added benchmarks (such as SYSmark 2014) which are lacking some of the mid-range data.
Power Consumption: Idle to 100% CPU Load (on IGP)
Because of the difference in TDP, the AMD APUs here use more energy, although all four comfortably use less than the 25W TDP. The dual core especially only registered a 10W difference from idle to a full CPU load.
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tarqsharq - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
Or League of Legends.... I have a friend whose little brother would benefit from a machine that could run League without barfing.Low budget, bench some free to play games!
HighTech4US - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
I have no need for any these underpowered CPUs from either Intel or AMD. As shown in the X264 tests the Intel Q8400 blows away all these low end parts. My main need is video encoding. Yes I know the Q8400 it is a 95 watt part but I recently spent $34 total to upgrade my 2008 system that has an Asus P5K Deluxe motherboard from a Q6600 105 watt CPU to a 50 watt Xeon L5420 50 watt CPU.$29 for the Intel L5420
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&...
Intel specs on the L5420
http://ark.intel.com/products/33929/Intel-Xeon-Pro...
$5 for the Socket LGA 771-775 adaptor
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&...
Intel specs on the Q6600
http://ark.intel.com/products/29765/Intel-Core2-Qu...
For $34 I have an upgraded system (100 mhz higher speed (2.5 vs 2.4 Ghz), 4MB (12 vs 8) more Cache, a higher FSB (1333 vs 1066) and much lower TPD (50 watts vs 105 watts) and this system put the hurt to all these low end parts.
I also sold off the Q6600 on eBay for $40 so my upgrade was basically FREE.
ozzuneoj86 - Saturday, May 31, 2014 - link
I've done this myself! While I wouldn't necessarily recommend that most people run out and buy an obsolete motherboard, mod it, buy expensive DDR2 and then buy a dirt cheap Xeon and mod that... BUT, I've modified a couple of systems like this and the performance per dollar is fantastic. I also like to use the L5240 3Ghz dual core 40W Xeons. Strictly from a performance per dollar perspective they will stomp all over any of these modern value CPUs, and you can pick up a pair of them for $15 or less. I own six or eight of them... I lost count... I also had a pair of L5420s, but used one to upgrade an old Dell which I sold for a $300 profit. I have two Dual Xeon boards I picked up on ebay a year and a half ago for $60 each, and have two L5240 3Ghz Duals in them. Performance in most cases should be similar to a desktop i3, but I only had to invest around $200 into the CPUs, coolers, motherboard and 8Gb of (unbuffered) ECC DDR2.These systems don't sip power by any means, so I wouldn't recommend them as file servers but they aren't bad for normal usage cases. One of my Dual Xeon systems is my living room gaming\htpc, coupled with a 350W Seasonic 80plus PSU I got on ebay for $15 and a Radeon HD 7750 I got on sale for $40... it's really quite a powerful system for how inexpensive it was.
casteve - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review, Ian.Perhaps this would have been better covered from a more likely scenario - web browser/office productivity, and HTPC. I can't imagine anyone using these for scientific/big gaming/video encoding set ups. Might be handy as a HTPC in the den - what's the HQV score, for example? How well does it perform with lower need Steam games. Heck, how well does it perform with Steam streaming?
toyotabedzrock - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
No tests of the hardware encoding engines?haardrr - Saturday, May 31, 2014 - link
back-the-day i was rooting for AMD, and i was pissed at the fact the anandtech used intel processors that were 3-4 times more expensive than AMD...i kept hoping that AMD was equal or faster than Intel. Sadly NEVER!.
the closest that amd came was an oc'd FX8350 against a stock 4570k.
But AMD had to use double the power consumption!...
fast forward to right now, i bought the 5150 and a asrock am1h-itx. The asrock am1 motherboard is awesome (maybe a bit expensive, but it has dc-in, all all the standard outputs; no overclocking though)
Dissappointed by the 5150, and wondered if a 25% bump in clock speed that the 5350 has would fix the "slow" feel i get from the 5150, i bought the 5350 on sale at 65.
while AMD has priced the 5350, to "theoretically" match the performance of a g3420, (5350's can't match it in normal use)
a celeron g1610/ g1810 on 14.04 linux has better mythtv deinterlacing, than the 5350 does.
there was a time that you needed an Nvidia GPU (VDPAU) for proper deinterlacing, but with intels open source work, the NVIDIA card is now not necessary but an asset. Whereas with the 5350 requires an NVIDIA card (gt630v2 gk208)... maybe someday the AMD engineers will think that the Hardware features that they build into their processors, should be usable under linux...
i bought the 5350 thinking that it would work well with MythTV... thinking that it could handle openGL high quality, yadif 2x deinterlacing, or even greedymotion 2x... it can't!. the best you can hope for is Yadif. and to get that you need to install the oibaf PPA to get VDPAU!... mind you it does use alot less power than the openGL deinterlacing. the main problem is AMD just does not care about free opensource opengl drivers (the ps4 while "linux" is not open, thus not open source, so AMD cares about it) so Mythtv sucks on the amd 5350. the only advantage the the 5350/asrock am1h-itx has is that it idles at 16 watts(laptop 19v psu), and the msi h61i/g3420 idles at 19 watts.(tfx bronze 300w... surprisingly efficent at low level, equal or 2watts better than the gold seasonic tfx. at the 20 watt level)
THE PROBLEM IS THAT the intel g3420 on trusty tahr(14.04) can deinterlace OTA HDTV 1080i, at yadif 2x... for 30 dollars more. in order for the 5350 system to deinterlace properly, requires an nvidia gt640v2 at 70.
to sum up, I regret buying the 5150 (waste of silicon), the 5350 can be useful under some scenarios, and the asrock am1h-itx( while 75$, has dc-in) is absolutely required to make the 5350 useful.
AMD has got to stop Acting like a loser (cut back, way back because they are a console CPU maker, and perhaps a server cpu maker) and produce a cpu that is better than intels.
jospoortvliet - Sunday, June 1, 2014 - link
Well, good to know these AMD CPU's suck for a basic mythtv box... Too bad.Soul_Est - Sunday, July 27, 2014 - link
I was looking to do the same thing under Linux using the 5350. Arch Linux + ( MythTV || TVHeadEnd ) + XBMC. Well, I'll start my HTPC planning from square one again.The PS4 runs FreeBSD and not Linux IIRC.
Soul_Est - Sunday, July 27, 2014 - link
Wish I could edit my own replies.Just did the pricing on the AMD (Athlon 5350, ASUS AM1I-A) and the Intel (Celeron G1820, BIOSTAR Hi-Fi B85N) components and they are similar in price. Too similar given what may be a large performance delta. Would the G1820 handle yadif 2x much better you think?
Soul_Est - Sunday, July 27, 2014 - link
Given that I don't know what your complete setup is haardrr, what do you make of this? http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Vdpau#AMD