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

AMD Athlon 5350 And AM1 Platform Review: Kabini In A Socket
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AMD is repackaging the mobile-focused Kabini APU for use on the desktop, and tucking them under the familiar Athlon and Sempron brands. We take a closer look at the company's socketed AM1 platform and compare its performance to Intel's Bay Trail-D.

AMD started banging the Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) drum shortly after purchasing ATI. But it wasn't until the company introduced its Jaguar architecture that we saw uptake really garner the big headlines. In rapid succession, AMD found its hybrid technology in the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and E- and A-series Mobility APUs (code-named Kabini and Temash) for mobile devices running Windows.

If you're not familiar with the Jaguar design, it's an evolution of AMD's Bobcat architecture, which we first looked at back in 2010. The goal this time around was to improve Bobcat's modest performance by augmenting the amount of work it could do per clock cycle. AMD also gave Jaguar support for more modern instruction set extensions like SSE 4.1/4.2 and AVX. Of course, in the process, APUs equipped with Jaguar get an updated on-board graphics engine. Gone is the VLIW-based design prevalent in Radeon HD 6000-and-newer GPUs, replaced by Graphics Core Next.

The Kabini-based APUs leverage up to four Jaguar cores and as many as 128 GCN-based shaders. If you want more technical depth on that processor, have a look at AMD's Kabini: Jaguar And GCN Come Together In A 15 W APU.

Almost a year has passed since our first look at Kabini. Originally, AMD positioned the APU as mobile-focused, ideal for low-power devices wielding the flexibility of x86. More recently, the company revealed its intention to sell the chip into a desktop platform called AM1 as well, built around its FS1b processor interface.

Of course, AMD's marketing machines is aflutter, calling AM1 the world's first "system in a socket", since Intel's Bay Trail-D design isn't upgradeable. It's an embedded configuration with a soldered-down SoC. Indeed, most of the Bay Trail-equipped boards we've seen so far appear best suited to industrial applications. In contrast, AM1 motherboards seem more desktop-like, supporting up to 16 GB of DDR3 memory and accommodating active cooling.


Athlon 5350
Athlon 5150
Sempron 3850
Sempron 2650
CPU Cores
4
4
4
2
Clock Rate
2.05 GHz
1.6 GHz
1.3 GHz1.45 GHz
GPU Frequency
600 MHz
600 MHz450 MHz400 MHz
Memory Data Rate
1600 MT/s
1600 MT/s
1600 MT/s
1333 MT/s
Total Cache
2 MB
2 MB
2 MB1 MB
TDP
25 W
25 W25 W25 W
MSRP
$59
$49
$39
$34

AMD is shipping AM1-capable APUs under the company's Athlon and Sempron brands. Currently, all of the available models are rated for 25 W and feature 128 shaders, although the graphics engine ranges from 400 to 600 MHz, depending on the specific implementation. Three of the four chips come with four cores and 1600 MT/s memory support, while the lowest-priced Sempron 2650 is a dual-core version with a 1333 MT/s transfer rate cap. Core frequencies range from 1.3 to 2.05 GHz, which does serve to hold back performance. Then again, Intel is shipping similar to slightly higher clock rates on its Silvermont-based CPUs (Intel Silvermont Architecture: Does This Atom Change It All?).


Pentium J2900Celeron J1900
Celeron J1800
CPU Cores
4
4
2
Base/Turbo Boost Clock Rate
2.41/2.67 GHz
2/2.42 GHz
2.41/2.58 GHz
Dynamic GPU Clock Range
688/896 MHz
688/854 MHz688/792 MHz
Memory Data Rate
1333 MT/s
1333 MT/s1333 MT/s
Total Cache
2 MB
2 MB
1 MB
TDP
10 W
10 W
10 W

At least in this segment, AMD and Intel are topping out with four cores (the Jaguar architecture can continue scaling, as it does in the Xbox and PlayStation, while Silvermont does as well in the Atom C2000 family). Intel's solution uses less power. However, the company's HD Graphics engine is also less capable. And memory support is limited to 1333 MT/s across the Bay Trail-D platform.

We'd expect AMD's socketed Kabini platform to be faster than the competition from Intel, based on all of those specifications, though Bay Trail-D may be more efficient. Let's take a closer look at the hardware for more detail.

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  • 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.