Hoping to redefine the entry level market with the upgradable AM1 platform, we take a look at AMDs latest low power APU based on the Kabini core, the Athlon 5350.
Product on Review: AMD Athlon 5350 APU
Manufacturer and Sponsor: AMD
Street Price: £42 inc. VAT (GBP)
Moving away from the mainstream computing, AMD bring a modern twist to entry level computing in the form of the AM1 platform. Based around the FS1b socket, which is essentially a more compact version of the sockets many will recognise distinctly as AMD. The Athlon 5350, based on the 28nm Kabini architecture that has a close knit CPU and GPU, AMD aims to provide an excellent general performance at a low power draw. Being the flagship, the Athlon 5350 is the most costly APU for this platform right now, coming in at just £40-43 inc VAT. Combined with an AM1 motherboard of your choice, that can be had at just £25 or maybe even less, you have the base for a PC system in a price range of an incredible £40-70 and potentially a complete system could be had for £150-200 (not including OS). At this price, you may be thinking that there would be significant cuts on some features, however this is not the case, the Jaguar CPU cores comes with a full complement of instruction sets, we even find USB 3.0, SATA 6 Gbps and compatibility for 4K resolution over HDMI and Displayport. Let’s move on to marvel at the wonders of this SoC.
AMD’s Overview of the Athlon APU
AMD Athlon and AMD Sempron APUs deliver a quad-core solution to consumers that includes two SATA 6 Gbps ports, two USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, PCIe 2.0 lanes for graphic card upgrades, and a trio of video outputs (DisplayPort, HDMI, and VGA) starting at under $40 USD. The AMD AM1 platform provides up to 3x more compute performance than its competitors, as well as balanced computing with DirectX® 11.2 and Windows 8.1 support to mainstream markets.
Specifications & Features
Upgradable platform
Designed to grow as your needs do.
– Utilize the flexible AM1 platform and select the AMD Athlon™ or AMD Sempron™ APU that’s right for you
– Pack more performance into your rig as the AM1 platform updates and improves
Incredible value
Take advantage with affordable, multitasking performance and sharp, vivid HD graphics
– AMD Radeon™ R3 graphics help exceed expectations for accelerated HD playback and everyday performance
– Socketed AM1 motherboards can enable small, sleek form factors with extraordinary value
Latest technology and features
Enjoy dynamic interactivity and exceptional features, including:
– Microsoft® DirectX® 11.2 and support for Windows 8.1 for an immersive experience on the most advanced OS
– Video Codec Engine (VCE) enables fast encoding across multiple devices so you can enjoy media almost anywhere
– Support for lightning-fast USB 3.0 and SATA 6GBps connectivity so you can access the content you want, whenever you need it
Detailing the scalability of the Jaguar cores
Amazingly, with exception to the Sempron 2650, each of these APUs come with a quad core CPU, though these ‘Jaguar Cores’ unlike the ‘Steamroller’ architecture are all ‘full fledged’ cores in a traditional sense with their own floating point units. It is worth noting that these CPU cores are also the same used in the latest generation of games consoles (namely the XBOX ONE and the PS4). The 2MB L2 cache is shared between all cores, and though the Kabini architecture does not have hUMA or HSA, it does support OpenCL 1.2, DirectCompute and C++AMP giving it the edge it needs in regards to GPGPU processing.
The Radeon R3 graphics contains 2 GCN processing cores, providing 128 stream processors, not ending there, for multimedia purposes, AMD have also included UVD 4.2 which allows for decoding of many popular media formats as well as VCE 2.0 that allows for low power encoding.
Packaging & First Look
The Athlon 5350 box
The box is smaller than the mainstream counterparts and is the attractive contemporary AMD colour scheme. Inside is the APU, the heatsink and supporting documents. Of course, you will also find the case sticker too.
The Athlon 5350
Though seemingly not unlike other AMD chips, the AM1 APU is substantially smaller in size at just 36mm². Words like cute could certainly be used.
AM1 Pin layout
The array of golden pins are tightly packed here.
Test Setup
AM1 Setup
Motherboard – ASUS AM1I-A
RAM – Xtreem LV PC3 19200 DDR3 LV 2400
SSD – Kingston Hyper X 240GB
Power Supply – NZXT Hale82 650W
Motherboard – ASUS AM1I-A
RAM – Xtreem LV PC3 19200 DDR3 LV 2400
SSD – Kingston Hyper X 240GB
Power Supply – NZXT Hale82 650W
APU/CPU Configurations
Athlon 5350 @ 2.05GHz, 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24,
Radeon R3 Graphics @ 600 MHz
A10-7850K @ 3.7/4.0 GHz (100MHz x 37/40, 1333 MHz 9-9-9-24,
Radeon R7 Graphics @ 720 MHz
A10-6800K @ 4.1 GHz/4.4 GHz (100MHz x 41/44. 1333 MHz 9-9-9-24)
HD 8670D integrated graphics @ Stock
A10-5800K @ 3.8GHz/4.2GHz (100MHz x 38/42. 1333MHz 9-9-9-24)
HD 7660D integrated graphics @ Stock
AMD A8-3870K @ 3.0GHz (100MHz x 29, 1333MHz 9-9-9-24)
HD 6550D integrated graphics @ Stock
Intel Core i5-4430 @ 3.0 GHz/3.2 GHz, 1866 MHz memory
HD 4600 Dynamic Frequency 350 MHz – 1.1 GHz
Power Consumption
It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards because energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use. Then the system is loaded with LinX 0.6.4 and MSI Kombustor simultainiously – watts are again monitored throughout the period of testing and the highest rated watts are then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.
Idling under 25W and hitting a peak load of 47W this chip uses very little power indeed, normal observed use appears to sit between 35-40W. Many will remember when these numbers represented how much power a lightbulb used. While we have made a habit of not monitoring thermals, if the numbers produced are to be reliable, the temperatures are low too, not even reaching 40°C under full load.
Synthetic Benchmarks: AIDA64
CPU Queen BenchmarkThis simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.
CPU Photoworxx Benchmark
This benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than 2 processing threads used. For example, on a 8-way Pentium III Xeon system the 8 processing threads will be “fighting” over the memory, creating a serious bottleneck that would lead to as low scores as a 2-way or 4-way similar processor based system could achieve. CPU PhotoWorxx test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
FPU Mandel Benchmark
This benchmark measures the double precision (also known as 64-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of several frames of the popular “Mandelbrot” fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x87, SSE2, AVX or FMA4 instruction set extension. FPU Mandel test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
Synthetic Benchmarks: x264 HD
Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.
Synthetic Benchmarks: Cinebench 11.5 & R15
CPU RenderingCINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.
Open GL Graphics Rendering
This procedure uses a complex 3D scene depicting a car chase (by renderbaron) which measures the performance of your graphics card in OpenGL mode. The performance depends on various factors, such as the GPU processor on your hardware, but also on the drivers used. The graphics card has to display a huge amount of geometry (nearly 1 million polygons) and textures, as well as a variety of effects, such as environments, bump maps, transparency, lighting and more to evaluate the performance across different disciplines and give a good average overview of the capabilities of your graphics hardware.
Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA
SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU, memory and GPGPU tests.
One shame about this platform is the use of just a single channel memory controller, the memory bandwidth suffers greatly here, and it is well documented at how memory starved the GPU is. This is also the reason the majority of our APU tests are done so in a memory starved environment as to highlight any improvement memory bandwidth provided by any architecture change.
Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark 11 & 3DMark – Fire Strike
3DMark 11Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
3DMark – Fire Strike
Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike will only be available in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.
Synthetic Benchmarks: PCMark 8 & Basemark CL
PCMark 8PCMark 8 is the latest version in our series of popular PC benchmarking tools. It is designed to test the performance of all types of PC, from tablets to desktops. With five separate benchmark tests plus battery life testing, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance. PCMark 8 is the complete PC benchmark for home and business.
Basemark CL
Basemark CL by Rightware is a comprehensive benchmark tool designed to measure the performance of OpenCL 1.1 implementations on various devices ranging from desktops to embedded systems. Basemark CL uses OpenGL ES 2.0 or OpenGL 2.1 for rendering, depending on the platform.
Synthetic Benchmarks: UNIGINE Heaven 4.0 & Valley 1.0
UNIGINE Heaven 4.0
Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
UNIGINE Valley 1.0
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
Game Benchmarks: AVP, Deus Ex: HR, TESV, Tomb Raider
Alien Vs. PredatorSpawned from the popular Alien and Predator franchises, Rebellion have collaborated to bring the legendary war to us through the medium of a first-person shooter. The game forces you to hunt, prey and most importantly survive in the swamp colony of Freya’s prospect as a Predator, Alien or Marine. The stunning visuals add to the sense of dread and terror that we have become so accustomed to seeing with the series.
The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
You play Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT specialist who’s been handpicked to oversee the defensive needs of one of America’s most experimental biotechnology firms. Your job is to safeguard company secrets, but when a black ops team breaks in and kills the very scientists you were hired to protect, everything you thought you knew about your job changes.
TESV: Skyrim
The Empire of Tamriel is on the edge. The High King of Skyrim has been murdered. Alliances form as claims to the throne are made. In the midst of this conflict, a far more dangerous, ancient evil is awakened. Dragons, long lost to the passages of the Elder Scrolls, have returned to Tamriel. The future of Skyrim, even the Empire itself, hangs in the balance as they wait for the prophesized Dragonborn to come; a hero born with the power of The Voice, and the only one who can stand amongst the dragons.
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider explores the intense and gritty origin story of Lara Croft and her ascent from a frightened young woman to a hardened survivor. Armed only with raw instincts and the ability to push beyond the limits of human endurance, Lara must fight to unravel the dark history of a forgotten island to escape its relentless hold.
Though these tests show poor gaming performance, remember this chip is not aimed at gaming, and realistically, using low settings and resolution will give playable results in many games still.
Game Benchmarks: Thief, Battlefield 4, DiRT SD, DOTA 2
Thief
Garrett, the Master Thief, steps out of the shadows into the City. In this treacherous place, where the Baron’s Watch spreads a rising tide of fear and oppression, his skills are the only things he can trust. Even the most cautious citizens and their best-guarded possessions are not safe from his reach.
As an uprising emerges, Garrett finds himself entangled in growing layers of conflict. Lead by Orion, the voice of the people, the tyrannized citizens will do everything they can to claim back the City from the Baron’s grasp. The revolution is inevitable. If Garrett doesn’t get involved, the streets will run red with blood and the City will tear itself apart.
As an uprising emerges, Garrett finds himself entangled in growing layers of conflict. Lead by Orion, the voice of the people, the tyrannized citizens will do everything they can to claim back the City from the Baron’s grasp. The revolution is inevitable. If Garrett doesn’t get involved, the streets will run red with blood and the City will tear itself apart.
Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4™ is coming to PC, powered by the advanced technology of DICE’s proprietary Frostbite™ 3 engine. Blur the line between game and glory in Battlefield 4. With dynamic destructable environments, vehicular combat, and the chaos of all-out-war with 64 players, Battlefield 4 on PC will be an unmatched interactive experience.
In addition to its hallmark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 features an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that starts with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follows your squad’s struggle to find its way home.
There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos of all-out war, found only in Battlefield.
In addition to its hallmark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 features an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that starts with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follows your squad’s struggle to find its way home.
There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos of all-out war, found only in Battlefield.
DiRT Showdown
DiRT Showdown is the new arcade racing game from the team that brought you the award-winning DiRT series, uncaged in 2012. Pick up and play controls combine with electrifying events, frenzied crowds and stunning graphics to deliver high octane, dive in and drive thrills from event one. DiRT Showdown comes with phenomenal graphical performance, bone-jarring damage, and social online and split-screen multiplayer as standard. Welcome to DiRT Showdown – a new world of driving delirium.
DOTA 2
Dota is a competitive game of action and strategy, played both professionally and casually by millions of passionate fans worldwide. Players pick from a pool of over a hundred heroes, forming two teams of five players. Radiant heroes then battle their Dire counterparts to control a gorgeous fantasy landscape, waging campaigns of cunning, stealth, and outright warfare.
Irresistably colorful on the surface, Dota is a game of infinite depth and complexity. Every hero has an array of skills and abilities that combine with the skills of their allies in unexpected ways, to ensure that no game is ever remotely alike. This is one of the reasons that the Dota phenomenon has continued to grow.
Irresistably colorful on the surface, Dota is a game of infinite depth and complexity. Every hero has an array of skills and abilities that combine with the skills of their allies in unexpected ways, to ensure that no game is ever remotely alike. This is one of the reasons that the Dota phenomenon has continued to grow.
Conclusion
Redefining entry level computing comes hand-in-hand with the ability to adapt for the ever changing consumer needs. Being able to stream seamless HD content, move around large files as well as coping with the latest internet and productivity tasks that have become standard in everyday work and leisure life, is something that the Athlon was simply capable of. There may be a few extreme exceptions that may cause a struggle, generally though, the Athlon 5350 is geared to do most of the heavy lifting that is expected from a modern PC while being smooth and snappy. No more Atom-ic stutter, freezes or lock ups and competent multitasking make the Athlon a perfect choice for a home computer or HTPC.
Yes the performance is low in regards to frame rates and gaming, and it may not be worth throwing in a discrete graphics card either to try and make it so, though, in real life scenarios such as browsing the internet and watching movies, the response is little different to what you would expect from any other higher end system. It is easy to forget that this is not a platform that is made to game or replace the workstation, and when it does come to some more demanding tasks or heavy multitasking, some slow down will occur and it may even surprise you when it does. Regardless I didn’t experience any significant freezes or lockups while doing so. This could be due to the architecture of the Athlon APU, the competence of the R3 GCN based GPU or even the full library of instruction sets on the CPU. In summary, the Athlon 5350 is a product that can easily satisfy the majority of home computing needs. Considering a full system based on this platform could potentially be had for around £150, the price of a mid-range graphics card, What’s not to like?
Low power, low price and seamless performance, the Athlon 5350 gets a Vortez Gold and Amazing Value.
Pros.
+ Breathes new life into entry level computing
+ Excellent Home/Office/HTPC application
+ Great user experience
+ Highly Affordable
+ Cool running
+ Very low power
Cons.
– Single Channel Memory
– Only 2x SATA connections
+ Breathes new life into entry level computing
+ Excellent Home/Office/HTPC application
+ Great user experience
+ Highly Affordable
+ Cool running
+ Very low power
Cons.
– Single Channel Memory
– Only 2x SATA connections
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to AMD for providing today’s review sample.
