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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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.