Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

AMD's AM1 Platform Is A Winner, But Who Is Playing The Game?

AMD Athlon 5350 And AM1 Platform Review: Kabini In A Socket
By

When I was asked to write about AMD's new AM1 platform, I wanted to do more than just collect benchmark numbers. I wanted to get a real-world sense of Kabini's capabilities beyond the mobile environments it was originally designed to serve. I surfed the Web, did my social networking, worked on documents, played YouTube videos, and tried to use the hardware as I would my own workstation. To my surprise, I didn't notice any difference between the Athlon 5350, Celeron J1900, or my own Core i7 in those common tasks.

Start hitting the low-end processors hard with a taxing workload, though, and the true desktop-oriented hardware pulls right away. Sure, AMD's Athlon might be a little snappier than the Celeron (an observation backed up by my data), but by a much smaller margin. In a game like Dota 2 or Grid 2, the Athlon can manage smooth frame rates at low details, while the Celeron is wholly incapable of usable performance. Get ambition and fire up Battlefield 4, though, and both low-power platforms choke.

Having said that, after using the hardware, I can comfortably say that the AM1 platform paired with an Athlon 5350 can deliver a satisfying experience in common computing and entertainment tasks. I can also say that, given a choice between Intel and AMD in this particular segment, the AM1 platform clearly wins. Intel is a bit more miserly with power, but a sub-20 W difference is largely irrelevant in the desktop space. So, congratulations AMD.

But I run into a problem when I try to imagine recommending an AM1 platform over, for instance, AMD's FM2+. Sure, a Sempron 2650 and motherboard might only cost about $60 together. But an A4-4000 and entry-level Socket FM2+-equipped motherboard combo starts in the $90 range. If you simply consider your options down the road, that extra $30 opens  much larger world of options that AM1 cannot match. And frankly, the 3.2 GHz A4-4000 should clean house in a majority of our tests compared to the Athlon 5350, which is $10 more expensive than the A4.

Admittedly, AMD isn't targeting the traditional desktop computing segment with AM1. It's going after a new pseudo-desktop arena referred to as "PC-like devices". This is the battleground where Android-equipped set-top boxes and media players are taking pieces of the traditional desktop machine's pie. Perhaps AM1 will help builders offer a low-cost alternative to the more powerful desktops, and claw back some market share.

A PC is so much more than just a CPU and motherboard, though. The rest of the components, such as memory, hard disks, and an operating system, already make up much of a budget machine's price tag. So I'm sceptical of this platform's ability to reclaim ground for the PC.

From an enthusiast's perspective, it's hard to imagine an environment where AMD's new AM1 platform is ideal, except in cases where very low-power and diminutive enclosures are desirable. Otherwise, this could be the foundation for a cheap computer a more mainstream user with simpler needs uses to check email and browse the Web. In ultra-low-cost developing markets, it probably also makes a lot of sense. But if you have higher aspirations for an upgradable platform, look elsewhere: Socket FM2+ is a vastly superior vehicle from a performance perspective, and scales many orders of magnitude higher than AM1.

Ask a Category Expert

Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject

Example: Notebook, Android, SSD hard drive

Display all 6 comments.
This thread is closed for comments
  • 0 Hide
    EdgeT , 9 April 2014 15:01
    They look like great little platforms. But a whole lot of people go the AMD route for homeservers (myself included). And just like me, a lot of people think that 4 SATA ports are just not enough. If it had like 8, like a lot of AMD motherboards I've looked at, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, and I bet a lot of people would.

    It's just convenience and cost efficiency, really, on the one hand, you've got 1 motherboard, CPU, tower, PSU, OS and IP adress for remote control and 8 HDDs and on the other, you've still got 8 HDDS, but 2 of everything else. Power consumption wouldn't make THAT much of a difference, since storage servers mostly idle, but the noise and size do take their toll.
  • 0 Hide
    EdgeT , 9 April 2014 15:10
    They look like great little platforms. But a whole lot of people go the AMD route for homeservers (myself included). And just like me, a lot of people think that 4 SATA ports are just not enough. If it had like 8, like a lot of AMD motherboards I've looked at, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, and I bet a lot of people would.

    It's just convenience and cost efficiency, really, on the one hand, you've got 1 motherboard, CPU, tower, PSU, OS and IP adress for remote control and 8 HDDs and on the other, you've still got 8 HDDS, but 2 of everything else. Power consumption wouldn't make THAT much of a difference, since storage servers mostly idle, but the noise and size do take their toll.
  • 0 Hide
    fergus1 , 15 April 2014 10:33
    For its price the AMD CPU is clearly a bargain, I thought it was a joke when I saw quad core CPUs for £30-£40! And running on 25W I think this just shows how much Intel are losing the low end CPU war. Don't get me wrong, I have an I5 adn wouldn't swap it for the world, but for >£100 Intel have very little to offer.
    I think the 1920x1080 and 1600x900 graph for Dota 2 are the wrong way round? And it would be good to also have had a graph for its performance with dedicated GPU.
  • 1 Hide
    subtitlefa , 18 April 2014 09:07
    I LOVE AMD :) 
  • 0 Hide
    Jakoob , 14 May 2014 22:40
    Im a bit worried about the test of power consumption. Both Athlon 5350 and J1800 are idling around 30 W, which seems too much compared to other tests around the world. Both should be somewhere around 10-15 W for idle.

    I think the problem is the PSU. Using 850W XFX is total overkill and even being certified as gold class, it has high efficiency at 20% load, which is 170 W. Therefore the PSU is used in non-efficient area and can simply add 15 - 20 W extra to the final power consumption.

    Next time maybe borrow PicoPSU and some efficient brick.

  • 0 Hide
    leeb2013 , 16 June 2014 00:11
    yeah, my Xeon uses <5W idle and 35-40W loaded.