Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Game Benchmarks

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

Although you probably wouldn't consider these gaming-centric platforms, we did want to assess their ability to handle mainstream titles (especially since AMD makes such a big deal about its GCN-powered graphics component).

Keep in mind that the Athlon 5350 represents the very best you'll see out of AM1, while there is one faster offering from Intel. Of course, the AM1-based platform will take a discrete upgrade if you need more performance, while Bay Trail-D does not.

Dota 2 is probably one of the most played titles, but it's not exactly demanding. Neither is Grid 2 at its lowest detail settings. Yet, AMD's Athlon barely manages to post performance numbers close to 30 FPS. Sure, you can call those numbers playable. But they're not particularly good-looking. Intel's Celeron J1900, on the other hand, is simply too slow for gaming.

Based on our results, I'd guess that AMD's AM1 platform should be able to handle less-demanding MMOs like World of Warcraft, lightweight shooters like Left 4 Dead, and a wide range of even more casual games (such as Angry Birds).

I did fire up Battlefield 4 and Neverwinter to see if the Athlon could cope. But even at 1280x720 using the lowest possible settings, it couldn't.

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.