Results: Euler 3D, Unigine Valley, and Power
Euler 3D
This is a scientific application that simulates air flow over an air foil, and it heavily relies upon a robust floating point unit. It also really seems to favor Intel based parts. I test 1, 2, and 4 threads in 20 steps.
Single thread performance in this application, with the 5350, is a painful experience. 15 minutes to complete the first test! Doesn’t AMD realize that I am on a deadline here! All joking aside, this is a pretty unfair test for the 5350. HPC applications will not make their way onto this particular part.
Unigine Valley
This is the latest benchmark from the nice Unigine people that really pushes DX11 based parts. I run the benchmark at 1280×720, high quality preset, and no AA.
This application really exposes the performance differences between the much larger part and the little old Kabini. Previous benchmarks in this review show it to be within around 50% of performance of the larger part, but in this case it was just pushed a little too hard and is sitting in the 33% range. Memory bandwidth is going to play a big part in an application like this.
Power
Now we finally come to the heart of the matter. Power is the primary goal of the Kabini design, and now we get to see if AMD delivers on that promise.
Idle numbers are not terribly impressive, but I honestly cannot see them going much lower. The 5350 is still 10 watts lower than the 6790K. Both parts exhibit aggressive clock throttling and gating. Add into that equation the inefficiency of a 500 watt power supply pushing 23 watts… we can see that the potential for a system with a much smaller and efficient power supply could potentially get down to the 12 watt range.
At load we see a much different and compelling story! The 5350 is pulling 37 watts at max. The 6790 is way up at 117 watts! Sure, overall the 5350 is about half of the performance of the 6790, but it consumes a third of the power at the wall. We would again see more gains with a smaller power supply. At least with the 6790K and its 117 watts it is getting into the higher efficiency range of this particular 500 watt power supply. 37 watts isn’t even pushing this supply in the least.
Good review. Nice to see AMD
Good review. Nice to see AMD back in the upgradeable low-end arena again unlike it’s competitor. I believe in emerging markets this might be a hit as well as HTPC/router/NAS for the rest of us.
Question though how well does this play 4k high bit-rate videos? Does it play the puppy video well?
Have you tried streaming the
Have you tried streaming the 4K videos posted on YouTube? I would also like to know how well it would handle Bluray playback too.
Nice article 🙂
AMD did
Nice article 🙂
According to Kanter over at Real World Tech, that branch predictor proved to be quite good so AMD implemented it also in Piledriver. I think a evolution of Jaguar keeps getting more and more interesting 🙂
Quarter of the power, half of
Quarter of the power, half of the performance.
^This is what tweaks my nethers!!!!!
EPIC JOB AMD!
“It is unfortunate that I was
“It is unfortunate that I was unable to get a working Intel Bay Trail D based product in for testing, but all indications point to these AM1 parts outperforming the Intel J1900 and J2900 products across the board. ”
Unlikely.
Anandtech has a few dual core bay trail D numbers, bay trail out performs in some (single threaded), not in others (multithreaded i.e. dual vs quad). The quad core bay trail D, I suspect would come in equivalent to slightly better on the CPU side at lower power while the GPU will be behind, naturally.
Here’s a good comparison at
Here’s a good comparison at the Tom’s Hardware article-
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-5350-am1-platform-review,3801.html
Hey Josh, good review, but
Hey Josh, good review, but can we get a more sensible approach to the power consumption tests? Testing a 25W Kabini with a 500W PSU seems a poor way to go about it. Might I suggest that you guys have a picoPSU for the low wattage Atoms, Kabinis and the like? These chips are likely to end up with external PSUs and in miniature form factors anyway, thus I figure utilizing lower wattage PSUs that are more efficient at these power consumptions, or even make more sense with respect to form factors, seems far more sensible.
Thanks.
I finally did get access to
I finally did get access to one of those really small power supplies. I will see if I can't get that up and running this week to test power consumption!
Awesome! Thanks for the
Awesome! Thanks for the response.
if only they allowed
if only they allowed overclock it would be a fun toy
Good review!
Good review!
Good benches but please get
Good benches but please get someone to proofread your stuff before you publish it. Your writing is awful. The sentences are downright confusing, the structure is terrible and your use of punctuation is erratic at best. If it weren’t for your profile suggesting otherwise I would have assumed that English is not your first language.
This article provides good
This article provides good benches, but please employ someone to proof-read your articles before they are published. Your writing is awful; the sentences are confusing, the structure is terrible, and your use of punctuation is erratic at best. If it were not for your profile suggesting otherwise, I would have assumed that English is not your primary language.
Thanks for reading!
That’s a burn. A+.
That’s a burn. A+.
That was awesome!
That was awesome!
can the sempron or athlon
can the sempron or athlon (2014 version am1 socket) be crossfired or just have an graphics card like a simple r7 250 or hd7770 or something in it and does it handle stable? plz reply by mailing me @ ownertje@hotmail.com
greets
luuk AKA AMDfan 😀
i have a fx8350/r9 270x rig just asking if it could be a sort of mini streaming and light gaming pc like skyrim @ low or something
You could use a single
You could use a single low-to-low/mid-range graphics card, but CrossFire is basically out of the question. The Kabini chips only support 4 PCI-E 2.0 lanes, but there are AM1 Platform motherboards with x16 slots (that run at a max of x4 electrically).
Actually, they support PCIE
Actually, they support PCIE 3.0 x4, not 2.0 x4, which is equivalent to PCIE 2.0 x8.
Nope, Kabini is at PCI-E 2.0.
Nope, Kabini is at PCI-E 2.0. AMD did this for power and money reasons. PCI-E 3.0 does take up more power as compared to 2.0. Certification for 3.0 does take more time and money in the development process. So for a low cost/low power part like this, they stuck with PCI-E 2.0.
Man, I would love to see an
Man, I would love to see an 8-Core Version with a GPU with 1152 Steam Processors for future steam machines. That may make a nice game system.
Josh
Kabini A6-5200 is
Josh
Kabini A6-5200 is manufactured at TSMC. But Athlon 5350 seems to be manufactured at Globalfoundries, Dresden. The “Diffused in Germany” marking on the heat spreader in the image on this page gives clues that its manufactured at Globalfoundries. Jaguar is a highly portable CPU core design and so is the GCN based GPU. With Athlon AM1, Kaveri, Berlin, Seattle and some console APU production (starting likely in H2 2014) all being manufactured at Globalfoundries, AMD should have no problems meeting the USD 1.2 billion 2014 wafer commitments.
AMD can’t give official word
AMD can't give official word right now on that due to them being in their "quiet period" but it does look like you are correct. Good for GF, I guess. Odd that it is diffused in Germany, rather than utilizing the US fabs in NY. I thought FAB 8 was the primary site for 28 nm HKMG… guess not.
Josh griped on the podcast
Josh griped on the podcast that the testing motherboard only had 2 SATA ports, so you can’t have fast storage (SSD) AND big storage (spindle) AND optical storage. Optical drives work pretty well on USB 2…
This is true. Good plan.
This is true. Good plan.
With such low power
With such low power consumption, if a board manufacturer made a raid capable board with 6+ Sata III ports, would this make a good NAS / media server? It sounds ideal.
For everyone who need
For everyone who need additional SATA port, you can always add it using PCIe card. Considering PCIe 2.0 x4 has 2GB/s bandwidth and x1 has 500 GB/s bandwidth (comparing to SATA1 150 MB/s, SATA2 300 MB/s, SATA3 600 MB/s), there are sufficient bandwidth to make SATA III run smoothly using PCIe expansion card x4 or you can use cheap 10 buck USD PCIe 2.0 1x for optical drive while the integrated SATA3 ports are used for storage drive. With 1 slot of PCIe 2.0 x4 and 2 slot x1 slot, i think we can add plenty of SATA port.
^ of course you need
^ of course you need motherboard with that feature. Kabini platform itself capable of providing 3 x1 and 1 x4 PCIe 2.0 lane.
I want to see this progress
I want to see this progress its way to having R9 GPU cores and maintain the 2ghz quad core. 60mm copper/aluminum water cooler with a variable speed pump run off CPU fan header. get someone to make a single channel dimm board with no pci-e slot. have x1 slot for wifi chip. 1 8 gig stick of 1866 with a built in cache slot on board like used in older laptops. Would make a pretty nice really small form factor gaming rig in the 4-500 dollar range. Kinda almost have to rethink the whole mini itx thing tho. laptop disc drives onboard power adapter.say like 4.5×4.5×4.5 gaming rig that was almost silent.