AMD's Kabini: Jaguar And GCN Come Together In A 15 W APU

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This is was we expect on the new consoles, I sure as heck can't wait to see what improvements we'll have on games ported over to PC are. I'm tired of these makeshift ports... Glad to see AMD has their hands in the console field, now maybe we'll see a huge influx of cash on their end to help improve their line and drivers that will give Nvidia a good run for so we can see "OUR money" go to good use. To better technology and innovation!
 
This is the best CPU architecture to come out of AMD in a very long time. It has so many things going for it in comparison to the current competition from Atom. Far superior overall performance, improved power consumption and FP performance over its predecessor (weak points of Brazos), much better graphics performance, broader x86 instruction support, and an actual process advantage (28nm vs 32nm). AMD has a huge opportunity here, and I sure hope they capitalize on it quickly because it won't last long. Atom's based on Intel's upcoming Silvermont architecture will likely outperform Jaguar and reverse most of the advantages AMD currently has.
 
Its performing well in all the wrong areas. If I'm going to play games, I'd rather play with at least high settings with decent resolution. I'm perfectly willing to give up mobility for a gaming machine.
 
Given that the AMD Temash and Kabinis are priced in the range of Atoms, it is illustrative that the Tom's reviewer used two Pentium and i3 CPUs that cost over $130 and $200 respectively.

To see the Intel chips utilizing dramatically more watts than the Kabini brings up issues discovered by other reviewers. Just look at the graph of the i3-3217u rated at "17 watt TDP" playing F1-2012 at what is 100% or nearly 35 watts! This means that AMD Kabini A6-5200 which is being released in June will outperform Intel's $225+ i3-3217u for price-performance per watt, you can be on it.

While running the range of applications, the AMD Kabini remained cool while the Intel chips heat up dramatically. This heat has to be dissipated from the laptop and it takes a toll on both the machine and user.

HP just announced 10 point touchscreen laptops that utilize AMD Jaguar Kabinis for a breakthrough price of $399 and that is just a start of a flood of good old competition (hello AMD Kaveri APU Xmas).
 
[citation][nom]mcx2500[/nom]To see the Intel chips utilizing dramatically more watts than the Kabini brings up issues discovered by other reviewers. Just look at the graph of the i3-3217u rated at "17 watt TDP" playing F1-2012 at what is 100% or nearly 35 watts![/citation]
This is because the i3-3217u is not an SOC, it's just an ULV dual core Ivy Bridge. Many of the controllers and other supporting hardware are located off die on the mother board, which increases power consumption over the CPU/GPU's rated 17W TDP.

Kabini will have to compete with Intel's upcoming ULV Haswell, which will go as low as ~10W TDP and will be an SOC. This is why I said in my previous comment that I feel AMD has a rare advantage right now and a narrow window of opportunity to make an impact. Jaguar will overlap Silvermont on the low end of its TDP range, and Haswell on its upper end. Both will likely outperform it in their given segments.
 
[citation][nom]mcx2500[/nom]Given that the AMD Temash and Kabinis are priced in the range of Atoms, it is illustrative that the Tom's reviewer used two Pentium and i3 CPUs that cost over $130 and $200 respectively.[/citation]

AMD told us the Kabini laptop they gave us would be priced $500 on the market, and that cheaper versions would be as low as $350.

We used the cheapest comparison laptops we could find. The only thing it illustrates is that we were trying to give Kabini the best chance of strutting its stuff.
 
AMD Kabini follows the idea of a tablet - people buy them because they are good enough. That's what is causing the downturn in the PC industry. With the performance advantage over ARM chips and Intel Atom, I really see this as a viable alternative in netbooks and Windows tablets.

AMD Kabini sleekbook. I am just drooling at the idea of that.
 
[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom] Kabini will have to compete with Intel's upcoming ULV Haswell, which will go as low as ~10W TDP and will be an SOC[/citation]

No, Kabini competes in the Intel Atom price range like its predecessor, AMD Brazos.

Sure they compete in a similar TDP range, but you wouldn't expect people to compare the chips that go into $999 ultrabooks with chips that will (ultimately) go into the same form factor as them, but are priced at <$400.

ULV processors from Intel are priced at a premium - because Intel is unchallenged in that space. AMD would be insane to try and price Kabini anywhere near IVB or Haswell ULV parts, because AMD will never win by overpricing their products.

"There's no such thing as a bad product, just a bad price point"

Edit: Not entirely sure why my comment got cut off, but here it is. Please note this comparison was made about the ultraportable area of the market, where the main concerns are weight, screen size and battery life. If we start comparing a CPU designed for primarily 11.6" or 10.1" screens with say 35W CPUs in a 15" form factor, you've lost the whole point of the comparison you're doing ultraportable vs. desktop replacements. Sure, if a manufacturer wants to put Kabini in a 15" form factor then it's fair game, but for the majority of Kabini chips, we'll see them in ultraportables, not desktop replacements.
 
Comparing Kabini with SB/IB is like comparing a four cylinder car with an eight cylinder car. It's plain silly, and kind of obnoxious.

This was a poor review because of the choice made there. I think a lot people were curious about how improved it was over the Bobcat. No data. How about the Atom? No data. Let's just compare it with chips the Piledriver competes with, instead of those it does. It makes no sense.

In case you guys haven't figured it out, Piledriver is the competitor for SB/IB, not Kabini. Two different markets. That you justify this so poorly by saying one particular notebook would cost x amount of dollars, is borderline insane. From one notebook, which are based on things other than the cost of the processor as well, you would assume all will cost the same? Strange.

The comparisons with SB/IB aren't worthless, but they should have been in addition to the processors in their market, and also with AMD's Trinity line. Maybe four or five processors, instead of just two that are addressing a higher performance market, and architecturally quite close.

You lost this one to other sites. Normally, especially when Chris writes them, Tom's ends up having the best information. Not this time. Not even close.
 
Kabini and Tamesh make perfect sense in worlds of low powered devices where a end user is less interested in a super computer and more concerned with features and power efficiency. Since this was not designed to be a high end part to compare it against full on Intel x86 processors is a bit silly when Richland APU's mobile and desktop are more the comparison for the i3 and Pentium. This part in a tablet would be quite impressive.
 
[citation][nom]amdfangirl[/nom]No, Kabini competes in the Intel Atom price range like its predecessor, AMD Brazos. Sure they compete in a similar TDP range, but you wouldn't expect people to compare[/citation]
TDP defines the possible form factor's a processor or SOC can occupy. In this upcoming generation both Intel and AMD will share many of the same mobile form factors, from tablets to ultrabooks. They will be competing. AMD might be forced into lower price points by Intel's upcoming products, but that doesn't change the fact that they're competing for the same market. And as Don pointed out, price points can overlap more than you might assume.

And umm, what were you going to say?
 
[citation][nom]amdfangirl[/nom]No, Kabini competes in the Intel Atom price range like its predecessor, AMD Brazos. Sure they compete in a similar TDP range, but you wouldn't expect people to compare[/citation]

No, Kabini competes with what it's priced similar to. That will be low end pentiums and Core i3s. This is by AMD's own admission.

Temash will be priced lower, in the Atom/Brazos and Tablet range.
 
surprise surprise. AMD releases a part that's designed to compete with the crappy atom, and toms review it in comparison to the flipping IB chip.

I know lets compare this low powered cpu vs the flagship intel architecture. that makes all the sense in the world.
 
nicely done, amd. full soc, cpu and igpu, in a prototype laptop is delivered instead of promo slides of just cpu cores (you know who i am talking about).
this seems like the worthy successor of the successful brazos socs. power efficient and well-performing.
now it's up to amd to push the arch to oems for competing in the portable computing arena.
 
Since the A4 5000 is the baseline model in synthetics its rather good but where it is impressive is in the power consumption sweepstakes; we also need to consider that the Pentium is clocked at over 2ghz and has a graphics core at 350-1300+mhz and the i3 has a core clock at 1.8ghz and HD4000 (intels top line) clocked at 350-1300+mhz, since core speed is essential to gaming performance particularly the 60% higher graphics core clocks the Intel parts use is rather impressive that a 500mhz/1.5ghz part consumes half the power the robust i3 uses and delivers around similiar performance. If you want parity lock the intel clocks to similar and the i3 will lose around half its performance (gaming) so yes its better on the basis of having a more aggressive clock rate.

I don't see what is so mediorce about it. How will the same i3 fair against A8 and A10 Richland APU's when they are released (Mobility only).
 
[citation][nom]ingtar33[/nom]surprise surprise. AMD releases a part that's designed to compete with the crappy atom, and toms review it in comparison to the flipping IB chip. [/citation]

Once again, please read carefully: ****AMD*** TOLD US TO COMPARE IT TO $300 - $500 LAPTOPS.
 

+100. :lol:
 
[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]Once again, please read carefully: ****AMD*** TOLD US TO COMPARE IT TO $300 - $500 LAPTOPS.[/citation]
That's fine, but did you guys seriously expect a low-power architecture like Jaguar to outperform Intel's full-power architecture? Blistering performance is not the point of a low-power architecture. As your power draw section shows, Jaguar draws less power than a ULV Ivy Bridge at a roughly equal TDP. I'm quite sure it also puts out significantly less heat. Besides being cheap, you can cram Jaguar into configurations that would melt with ULV Ivy Bridge. I doubt Haswell is going to change things up much, but we'll see.

Also, I'm quite sure that both Intel chips it's being compared to here are significantly more expensive than the Jaguar chip; the laptops might be at a competitive level, but the OEM is going to have to cut more corners in order to hit that price point with the more expensive Intel silicon than they will with a cheaper AMD solution.

So anyways, the point is: you should have a Bobcat and an Atom in there for comparison, since that's the interesting comparison. Showing us that it can't outperform Sandy and Ivy Bridge is not interesting; that was a given, and isn't the point.
 
I just bought a Trinity A8-4500M laptop for $375 this week!
@ $380 now on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-K55N-DS81-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B00B7K11MI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369379598&sr=8-1&keywords=K55N
There's a cheaper HP A8 version on Bestbuy's website, even!

THAT is under $400 dollars and it scores an average 3.6k on Geekbench while the Pentium B960 average is 3.5k.
It is 35W and so is the Pentium. THAT is the chip that was to match the Pentium, and it is right now!

The new Kabini is meant to be cheap and fight the cheap Atoms. There was a Brazos laptop on Best Buy's site for $325, and that's where the Atoms would sit if they put them in laptops anymore. Once the "extra new price" fades, that's the segment where they will sit as this directly replaces Brazos.
 
@cleeve, please provide a link for HP Sleekbook with i3-3217U at ,,starting around $400". At Amazon a 15" Sleekbook with horrible TN lowres display is 512USD.
Kabini prototype which you sayed ,,AMD told us the Kabini laptop they gave us would be priced $500 on the market" has high quality 14" 1080p display, which is more expensive and draws more power from GPU and battery.
At last I as a sw professional I'm not interested in low-performance CPU (I have N56VZ with I7) but I believe you are wrong about price of this laptop comparing with other.
You could say at last that we will have to wait real prices, I doubt we will find this prototype configuration at only 500USD...
 
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