The Desktop Kabini Review Part 1: AMD Athlon 5350 (AM1) Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 9, 2014 8:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmarks
Console Emulation – Dolphin Benchmark: link
At the start of 2014 I was emailed with a link to a new emulation benchmark based on the Dolphin Emulator. The issue with emulators tends to be two-fold: game licensing and raw CPU power required for the emulation. As a result, many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant post to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53; meaning that anything above this is faster than an actual Wii for processing Wii code, albeit emulated.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Encryption –TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encryption tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
126 Comments
View All Comments
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, April 14, 2014 - link
Why doesnt anyone make a mini itx boardthat uses the laptop fusion APUs, like the a10-5750m? those only draw 10-15w more power, but have dual channel memory controllers, are much more powerful overall, and are still pretty cheap,. the kabinis are just to slow, but the high end fusions are too expensive now.tyaty1 - Thursday, May 1, 2014 - link
You can unervolt/undecvock a 6600k just as well.
sheh - Friday, April 18, 2014 - link
No noise, power, temperature figures?unseen1980 - Wednesday, July 16, 2014 - link
My overclocked 5350 is not performing that bad http://devacron.com/supercharged-amd-athlon-5350/TheFriz - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
I had an E-machine whose MB died. At first I was going to install an older P4 single core MB/CPU, but the performance just wasn't enough for the online game my cust. just had to play. Fry's had a MSI AM1I MB on closeout, and a AMD 5350 on special. So for under $40 had a replacement for the E-machine. Win 7 worked noticeably better, and the video was plenty fast. Plenty of USB ports for the printer & scanner. MB had PS-2 ports, so didn't have to throw away the KB & mouse. MB didn't have any PCI slots, just a PCI-Express slot for video card, which I tried, but the on board video was just as good as the 256 meg card I had. MB dropped in without a hitch.Only 2 SATA ports, this made cloning the hard drive a nuisance. Thanks for USB DVD-RW's.
Just for grins, tried Mint and Puppy Linux. Was really snappy, and the online game played on Mint. Win. 10 probably would have worked, but I quit while I was ahead.
LikeClockwork64 - Monday, June 5, 2017 - link
The problem with this review is the modern content you are trying to run. This processor can wreck old school content. A little $150 PC with this processor could do things that a $1000 from the mid 2000s would struggle with.