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 ESTGPU Performance
Looking at 3DMark’s Ice Storm test, the comparison between Intel’s 22nm HD Graphics in the Pentium 2020M and the Radeon HD 8830 in the A4-5000 is extremely close. In fact, across almost all of the 3DMark benchmarks we see the two perform very similarly. The lone exception being 3DMark 11 where the A4-5000 maintains a significant lead and even approaches Trinity in terms of performance (making it feel more like a fluke than the norm).
Turning to GFXBenchmark (formerly GL/DXBenchmark), we see performance tilt in favor of Kabini once again. The T-Rex HD test is extremely shader intensive. There’s about a 20% gap in raw shader performance between the 2-CU GCN implementation in Kabini and the 6 EU Gen7 graphics core in the Pentium 2020M, which maps almost perfectly to the performance delta we see in T-Rex HD. Now we see where the Pentium/Core i3 comparison comes from.
| GPU Performance | |||||||||||||||||
| 3DMark Ice Storm | 3DMark Cloud Gate | 3DMark Fire Strike | 3DMark 11 | 3DMark 06 | GFXBenchmark T-Rex HD | ||||||||||||
| AMD A4-5000 (Radeon HD 8330) | 23196 | 2159 | 310 | 580 | 3803 | 37 fps | |||||||||||
| Intel Pentium 2020M (HD Graphics) | 23135 | 2168 | 285 | 401 | 3542 | 30 fps | |||||||||||
All of this is fine if we’re looking at theoretical GPU benchmarks but what about actual games? In our Kabini review Jarred found the A4-5000 to be incapable of playing modern titles at reasonable frame rates, but what about titles from a few years ago? To find out, I dusted off Oblivion (with the Shivering Isles expansion) and threw it on my Kabini, Brazos and IVB Pentium systems.
I configured all three systems the same way: 1366 x 768, with medium graphics quality presets. I even used our old Oblivion SI benchmark from 2007. The results seemed to mirror what we saw in 3DMark:
| GPU Performance | ||||||||||||||||||
| Oblivion - 1366 x 768 Medium | Diablo III - 1366 x 768 Low | Oblivion - Power Consumption | ||||||||||||||||
| AMD E-350 (Radeon HD 6310) | 20.1 fps | 21.9 fps | ||||||||||||||||
| AMD A4-5000 (Radeon HD 8330) | 26.1 fps | 25.8 fps | 15.2W | |||||||||||||||
| Intel Pentium 2020M (HD Graphics) | 27.7 fps | 20.3 fps | 31.4W | |||||||||||||||
Kabini is about 30% faster than Brazos in GPU performance, and almost identical to the Pentium 2020M. Intel has a 6% performance advantage here, but I’m wondering if that’s from the CPU and not the GPU (Oblivion tends to hit both pretty hard). At lower quality settings (and/or resolution) you can definitely get Kabini above 30 fps, but even here I’d say it’s playable. More importantly, it’s performance competitive with Intel’s HD graphics.
I was also curious to see how Diablo III ran on Kabini so I fired up an early save and ran through the Cemetery of the Forsaken recording average frame rate. On a more modern title, both Kabini and Brazos actually hold a performance advantage over the Pentium 2020M.
As far as power goes, Kabini delivers relatively similar performance at roughly half the power of the Pentium 2020M.
With any of these integrated GPUs, the gaming experience even on previous generation high-end titles isn’t going to be a walk in the park.
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FwFred - Sunday, May 26, 2013 - link
Same area == less transistors, and higher power per transistor when comparing Intel's best to GF or TSMC's best. If the costs are similar, an AMD chip will be worse--less performance due to less transistors--so it will have to price it lower. It's design teams are at a distinct disadvantage, so AMD is forced to focus on seams in Intel's product lineup. Not an enviable position.casteve - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
Would love to see HQV scores for this device.Beenthere - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
Those who don't understand Anand's analysis aren't qualified to even make comments on Kabini vs. Intel. The bottom line is once again AMD is offering more than intel and for substantially less cost. More in this case equals:1. Better user experience
2. Better run time/longer battery life
3. Better grahics performance by a huge amount
4. Better price
5. Potential for better display or SSD
xenol - Saturday, May 25, 2013 - link
At first I saw the benchmark numbers and went "so what's AMD trying to prove here?" But then I saw the power consumption and went ô_o.Similar performance for a lot less power? That's good news for mobile devices.
thebeastie - Sunday, May 26, 2013 - link
I hope to see this SoC in the next version of HPs popular Microserver, or even something that is so cheap mb+Kabini combo that I can build a comparable sized and priced HP Microserver.duploxxx - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
nah HP has fallen again for the Intel pressure and has chosen for a sandy in the next generation Gen8 of microservers, which will make it offcourse again way more expensive.Klimax - Sunday, May 26, 2013 - link
Too little too late. They have few weeks till Haswell (Upper limit) and a quarter or two till new Atoms. (Lower limit) Not sure if there will be much left after that.ddriver - Sunday, May 26, 2013 - link
It will still fit its niche, baytrail will still be slower, albeit a bit more efficient, and haswell will be way more expensive. Intel likes their profit margins high, even on low end products, baytrail has good chances of being more expensive. The profit margin for AMD is much thinner, they are just happy to move some product.kyuu - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
Haswell is not going to compete on price, and the jury is still out on how low it will be able to scale power-wise since we have not seen any actual review hardware for ULV Haswell.As far as Atom... we have a lot of promises but Intel has yet to show any ability to do anything worthwhile with Atom. Even assuming Bay Trail lives up to promises, in a quarter or two AMD will be well on its way to releasing improved Jaguar-based silicon.
Hector2 - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
I bought a full sized $280 15.4" Lenovo laptop on sale several months ago. It has a Intel Sandy Bridge 2.4GHz i3 dual core with 4M of memory. I'm really happy with the performance and thrilled about the price. Very tough to beat this price/performance