AMD AM1 Kabini Part 2: Athlon 5350/5150 and Sempron 3850/2650 Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 29, 2014 2:00 PM ESTReal World Benchmarks
Video Conversion - x264 HD 3.03 Benchmark
Graysky's x264 HD test uses x264 to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
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.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link
Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.
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Eeqmcsq - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
"... Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53; meaning that anything above this is faster than an actual Wii..."I think you mean anything "below" this number, since the measurement is in time.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
'Above' being above on the graph. I'll just change the wording. I thought I had changed my explanatory template, guess it didn't save...Metalliax - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
Why can't review sites please start using sub 150W PSUs for these tests! You should delete your power chart completely unless you can show actual power draw with a PSU that would actually be used in such a setup. I can't believe you think you can post such nonsense with a 1250W PSU.extide - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
X2 ! I know you have your reason for using the 1250W PSU (so it's always the same) but the result is USELESS NUMBERS. It doesnt matter if they are comparable if they are utterly useless!easp - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
Good call!CU - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
Yes, adding haswell celerons like the g1820 and pentiums like the g3220 would be very helpful. Those cpu's plus MB's cost about the same as the Ahtlon 5350.savagemike - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
Agree completely. Due to similar costs and the fact I can't passively cool the AMD stuff anyway these are the Intels I'd be comparing them to for a budget build.azazel1024 - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
I guess you can consider the IGP benchmarks for something, because I assume it would mean some older and more casual games would be likely to run fine, where as with the Bay Trail IGP they might not. However, at least based on the benchmarks used, even the AMD's IGP here in these low end processors is not up to the task of playable frame rates. Unless I am missing something, this was 1280x1024 at LOWEST settings and they were hitting mid 20's on average frame rates. That may be playable to some and bumping it down to 1280x720 might get you in to the low 30's...but that is still barely, barely playable at best.Which makes me wonder...what would a Pentium or Celeron Haswell that might cost less manage in terms of performance. The IGP is a fair amount more capable, especially the ones with HD4400 on there...which is MASSIVELY more performance than either the Bay Trail or Kabini has...at the same price. Granted, higher TDP, but based on what I know of the actual power consumption of the processors, Haswell Celeron/Pentium might only be a litteral handful of watts more (5-10) under load and probably around the same idle.
Low end board + low end Haswell processor runs ~$100 combined...same price as the high end Kabini and WAYYYYYY more performance.
ozzuneoj86 - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
I don't really understand the inclusion of so many recent high end chips. For future reviews of this nature you could probably cut out all but one mid\high end CPU from each vendor, and you'd save a huge amount of benchmarking time.Along with that, it doesn't seem like I've really learned much from many of the benchmarks, since all we have to compare are high end, high TDP CPUs from the past 3 years, and these AM1 Kabini chips... as expected, the Kabinis are all similar in performance (with slight increases from least to most expensive), and the high end CPUs are significantly faster. Readers probably already knew that without the benchmarks though.
It'd be far more useful to compare these to older CPUs and their low wattage variants, such as Core 2 Duos and Quads, AM2\AM3 Athlon X2 and X4 CPUs, as well as other low power chips that are common these days, like the Ivy Bridge based Celeron 1037u, Sandy Bridge Celeron 847, AMD E-350... even an old Atom (from the Ion platform era) would be helpful for those upgrading aging HTPCs. Not to mention any of the direct competition for these chips, like the Ivy\Haswell Celerons and Pentiums.
It'd also be nice to have something to compare the dedicated GPU results to... like the Celeron J1900, or any of the CPUs mentioned above. There are many J1800\J1900 boards out there that can have a dedicated GPU installed.
Also, as others have mentioned, the power consumption numbers with such a high wattage PSU aren't very helpful either.
If its a matter of not having the hardware on hand, we're talking about low end hardware... you could probably get a decent example of almost everything I mentioned for a few hundred dollars total. Besides, I'm sure readers would gladly donate some hardware if it meant having it used in benchmarks for a few years.
Thanks for the article, I just feel like it could have been much more focused on the products being reviewed and how they compare to the competition.
ozzuneoj86 - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
Just remembered something else...The game benchmarks need to include older games. One or two examples of recent games that are nearly unplayable would be enough to let us know what we can't do with these... but a few old games, or even highly popular current games that don't require much power would be far more likely to influence someone's buying decisions.
Will it run Minecraft at 1080P? How about 720P? How about a few games from 4-5 years ago?