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

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[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]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.[/citation]

Yes and no.

If you're looking for small form factor, the i3 and Pentium based "huge" notebooks won;t be on your shopping list.

You learn something new everyday and I just did a couple of days a ago: I traveled to our country side and surprise surprise, everyone has netbooks because they can use them inside their cars and the battery last long enough to make a long trip from town to town using just the car power if they need it. Most folks have Atoms and only some have AMD Brazos systems, but every one seem to prefer netbooks over regular sized lappies.

Maybe this is not common for city folks (I never imagined, actually), but it makes perfect sense to me, haha.

Cheers!
 


The way i use my laptop is a mobile driver downloader, and virus research database for my sidejob fixing and making pcs. I don't need a high end notebook, a superlight and super lame ultrabook (god, what a terrible formfactor), just a simple netbook. frankly a chromebook is enough for me, but i dislike chromebooks and stick with the superlong life super low battery drain super cheap netbook.

since i'll be in the market soon the Kabini is something relivant to my interests. So that is why i find this review of questionable worth. Its not really Cleeve's fault... i mean AMD sent him a flippin' a4 with a HD monitor and high end system specs for no freakin' reason. Of course Cleeve will then go out and find a similar priced laptop likely with much lower system quality... because amd just surounded a $30 laptop chip with a $400 pc for no reason whatsoever.

Seriously AMD you made your own bed with that choice. Send him a freakin' netbook. That's what i'm interested in, and that's what that APU is really made for.

Still i would have liked some numbers on battery life.
 
Seems like the A6-5200 is the one that would better compare with the I3. Would be nice to see comparison with chips closer to its power usage as well. Maybe next time.
There's a lot of mis-information out there, so anything you can do to clear it up would help.
 
[citation][nom]BringMeAnother[/nom]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.[/citation]

Well these are mobility chips that have some gaming, if you want a gaming machine then get somethin else that uses much more power and gives much more performance. Its like complaining about a Prius not doing well at the track, thats not what its designed to do. Also, keep in mind these chips are massively more powerful than non x86 cpus such as Tegra and the like. Those already perform well in tablets and even the weakest of these AMD chips is massively more powerful than that.

When it does come to x86 gaming tho on a tablet, these are better than the intel chips which are using twice as much power when gaming. That TDP is quite misleading. I wouldnt want those power sucking chips in my tablet. If i'm gonna have to keep it plugged in all the time, I might as well be on my desktop which is a thousand times better at everything but being mobile. The upcoming stuff from intel tho will be very interesting.
 
cleeve :

"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."


Take a look at the new TechReport review of the A4-5000 utilizing OpenCL acceleration: it blows away Ivy Bridges i3 and i5-3317u in a number of applications.


http://techreport.com/review/24856/amd-a4-5000-kabini-apu-reviewed/6
 
[citation][nom]tourist[/nom]I think don took the right approach, based on amd price info he compared it to what would be available off the shelf Today. Configurations will be left up to oem's to decide. No need to shoot the messenger for pointing out how steep the competition is. In this case he simply pointed out the the weakest link is price.[/citation]

You can see if Don does the same thing when Haswell notebook and Silverthrone netbook comes out.
 
[citation][nom]mcx2500[/nom]"Take a look at the new TechReport review of the A4-5000 utilizing OpenCL acceleration: it blows away Ivy Bridges i3 and i5-3317u in a number of applications.http://techreport.com/review/24856 [...] reviewed/6[/citation]

You understand that many of those results are time based, so lower results are better, right? We benched most of those in OpenCL, our results are similar.

The A4-5000 loses in Luxmark, WinZip, Handbrake, which we also tested. It only pulled a win in Musemage at techreport, and it won in the Sandra GPGPU Cryptography in our benches. It lost in everything else.

You seem really determined to find something that isn't there...
 
[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]You understand that many of those results are time based, so lower results are better, right? We benched most of those in OpenCL, our results are similar.The A4-5000 loses in Luxmark, WinZip, Handbrake, which we also tested. It only pulled a win in Musemage at techreport, and it won in the Sandra GPGPU Cryptography in our benches. It lost in everything else.You seem really determined to find something that isn't there...[/citation]
According to the link, A4-5000 won i3 at WinZip 17.5 (OpenCL)...
 
This review was insanely stupid. Let's find the cheapest EOL on sale i3 laptop and pit it against a brand new AMD cpu architecture which actually serves a different niche.
 
[citation][nom]HemiDimer[/nom]This review was insanely stupid. Let's find the cheapest EOL on sale i3 laptop and pit it against a brand new AMD cpu architecture which actually serves a different niche.[/citation]
Same as using dirt cheap Llano notebook against a brand new Atom notebook for comparison.
 
[citation][nom]qcmadness[/nom]Same as using dirt cheap Llano notebook against a brand new Atom notebook for comparison.[/citation]

Exactly! Yet I suspect this reverse scenario would ever (be allowed to) happen. I hope this site will review the Kabini properly :/
 
[citation][nom]HemiDimer[/nom]Exactly! Yet I suspect this reverse scenario would ever (be allowed to) happen. I hope this site will review the Kabini properly[/citation]

The problem that the author have not consider is that there are at least two types of audiences:
1. Cheap and fast: go with i3 / Pentium / Low-end Trinity
2. Light and portable: go with Atom / Jaguar / Bobcat (i3 ULV is not considered if you have read the power consumption part)

This review serves audience 1 but not 2.
Other reviews serves audience 2 but mostly not 1.

But since Kabini is in fact, targeting audience 2, emphasizes on the power draw rather performance, including Atom for direct comparison and i3 ULV as reference is more appropriate.

p.s. I am a sort of audience 2. I don't need stellar performance, but I need high portability.
 
[citation][nom]BringMeAnother[/nom]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.[/citation]

It's not meant for a desktop, if that's what you're referring to. Of course it doesn't push BF3 on maxed out settings at 120 frames per second. It's meant for the tablets and ultrathins that Intel is pushing like crazy right now that the average grammy and auntie are using. If you want to really game like most of the others on this board do, myself included, you need discrete parts. That's a no-brainer.
 
[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]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.[/citation][citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]Once again, please read carefully: ****AMD*** TOLD US TO COMPARE IT TO $300 - $500 LAPTOPS.[/citation]This article could have been done better, no matter how you spin it and activate your CAPSLOCK POWARSSSS.

1. The supplied laptop is an author-admitted svelte laptop. Looks like it has a decent sized screen too. I think you'll have a hard time finding a 14-15" ultrathin-type with an i3 for under $500. Beyond that it's still not entirely fair, I'd bet shipping ultrathins using Kabini will be cheaper and they still use less total system power. 15W SoC vs. a 17W CPU + other.
2. In terms of pricing, the Pentium IS a better matchup, and I wouldn't remove it (or the i3 even) from the charts. But form, heat, power? Not even close. Might as well start comparing it to desktop chips, or Trinity. I'd bet I can find a budget 35W Trinity laptop we can run roughshod over Kabini too, power consumption be damned!
3. They will be putting Kabini in much cheaper machines too. Given that is the case, it might be nice to see how it compares to an Atom, even though this particular Kabini device would not land in this range. There's no reason you couldn't use this prototype's benches just to see how a more basic, cheaper model with this Kabini chip would compare to Atom. Atom would also be closer in terms of power and heat.
4. The memory has been purposely gimped on Kabini and the i3. Not cool! Use the fastest memory each platform supports, please. It's the only thing that actually, genuinely makes sense. You will find Kabini and the i3 shipping with DDR3 1600, the Pentium not so much. The fact that a 15W Kabini SoC supports DDR3L 1600 is fantastic, Trinity at 17W didn't. Not sure about Richland.
5. The article should also include a previous-gen AMD model, so people can see how much it has improved over similarly-priced older models, powered by Brazos 2.0.
 
[citation][nom]qcmadness[/nom]The problem that the author have not consider is that there are at least two types of audiences:1. Cheap and fast: go with i3 / Pentium / Low-end Trinity2. Light and portable: go with Atom / Jaguar / Bobcat (i3 ULV is not considered if you have read the power consumption part)This review serves audience 1 but not 2.Other reviews serves audience 2 but mostly not 1.But since Kabini is in fact, targeting audience 2, emphasizes on the power draw rather performance, including Atom for direct comparison and i3 ULV as reference is more appropriate.p.s. I am a sort of audience 2. I don't need stellar performance, but I need high portability.[/citation]

Kabini targets Pentiums, based on price, and low-power/low-cost i3's, based on portability in addition to price. It's great best/worst case scenario spectrum, and I'm extremely pleased with the enlightening info the comparison has provided.

You might not like it, but it doesn't change the price point and form factor.

What you wanted to see was a Temash review. We did, too, but they didn't supply one for testing. They will, inevitably, and when they do I'm sure it will put the hurt to Clover Trail.

In the meantime, all the teeth gnashing and foot stomping in the whole wide world doesn't change the fact that someone with $400 who wants a low-power notebook is probably better served with the i3-3217U.

It seems some of you would rather not have access to that information, and would rather we didn't share it with the public at any rate. I wonder if laptop buyers would share your thirst for burying data... probably not.

Doesn't matter though. Info is there for all to see, no matter how much you might wish it was never discovered. 😉
 
Just finished reading the Anandtech review. It was much better, I am sorry to say. This is coming from someone who has been reading Tom's since the late 90s, and remembers when Thomas Pabst wrote reviews. I wouldn't post here if I didn't still like THG.

Cleeve, the i3-3217u system eats a whole lot more power than this Kabini laptop. That's a fact, jack. You're also going to be hard pressed to find a lot of i3 laptops for $400 like you keep saying, unless you downsize to 13" or less. Not acceptable! The brand spanking new, non-old-stock 14"+ i3s are ~$500 and up.

It seems like you'd rather share only that which matters to you, and ignore all else. Blinders. You're being defensive, if not downright fanboyish. I couldn't care less if AMD "wins" anything here, but the article could be much better and you're taking criticism very poorly.
 
[citation][nom]alextheblue[/nom]Cleeve, the i3-3217u system eats a whole lot more power than this Kabini laptop. That's a fact, jack.[/citation]

That's an alarmingly skewed 'fact', since it only ate notably more power when gaming, and was neck and neck for general productivity and video.

Don't agree, I don't think most folks would after looking at the evidence. Going to have to agree to disagree, there.

[citation][nom]alextheblue[/nom]You're being defensive, if not downright fanboyish. I couldn't care less if AMD "wins" anything here, but the article could be much better and you're taking criticism very poorly.[/citation]

Defensive? I'm merely explaining my rationale, which is that more data is *always* better, wether or not it's convenient.

Fanboyish? I couldn't imagine caring less which product does excels. I'm a fanboy for value, though, and proudly so. Based on what I've seen I will advocate Temash vs. Clover Trail as staunchly as I'm a proponent of the i3-3217U vs the A4-5000.

In my opinion, 'fanboyish' might be applied to people who would prefer that certain data was buried if it doesn't make their favorite brand shine.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but that doesn't make it right. Doesn't make mine right, either, of course. In any case it looks like agreeing to disagree is our only option here, too. :)
 
[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]Kabini targets Pentiums, based on price, and low-power/low-cost i3's, based on portability in addition to price. It's great best/worst case scenario spectrum, and I'm extremely pleased with the enlightening info the comparison has provided.You might not like it, but it doesn't change the price point and form factor.What you wanted to see was a Temash review. We did, too, but they didn't supply one for testing. They will, inevitably, and when they do I'm sure it will put the hurt to Clover Trail.In the meantime, all the teeth gnashing and foot stomping in the whole wide world doesn't change the fact that someone with $400 who wants a low-power notebook is probably better served with the i3-3217U. It seems some of you would rather not have access to that information, and would rather we didn't share it with the public at any rate. I wonder if laptop buyers would share your thirst for burying data... probably not.Doesn't matter though. Info is there for all to see, no matter how much you might wish it was never discovered.[/citation]

That means you get my points and still ignoring it deliberately.
Okay fine then.
 
[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]Kabini targets Pentiums, based on price, and low-power/low-cost i3's, based on portability in addition to price. It's great best/worst case scenario spectrum, and I'm extremely pleased with the enlightening info the comparison has provided.You might not like it, but it doesn't change the price point and form factor.What you wanted to see was a Temash review. We did, too, but they didn't supply one for testing. They will, inevitably, and when they do I'm sure it will put the hurt to Clover Trail.In the meantime, all the teeth gnashing and foot stomping in the whole wide world doesn't change the fact that someone with $400 who wants a low-power notebook is probably better served with the i3-3217U. It seems some of you would rather not have access to that information, and would rather we didn't share it with the public at any rate. I wonder if laptop buyers would share your thirst for burying data... probably not.Doesn't matter though. Info is there for all to see, no matter how much you might wish it was never discovered.[/citation]

We all know that i3 ULV is faster, but the fact is that i3 ULV is less suitable for portable notebook / netbook category.

Other major review hardware website also inclueded Pentium / i3 ULV tests along with Kabini.
They also do a comparison with Bonnell and Bobcat.

Who have skewed the test is obvious.
 
Once again, please read carefully: ****AMD*** TOLD US TO COMPARE IT TO $300 - $500 LAPTOPS.

Do you always follow what AMD and Intel tell you to write in your articles? I hope not. Sure, they said compare it to laptops in that price range, but they didn't say you COULDN'T also compare it to the Atom and Bravos as well.

Not sure what you were trying to accomplish with this article, but it certainly wasn't a fair way to introduce Kabini benchmarks to the world.
 
Once again, please read carefully: ****AMD*** TOLD US TO COMPARE IT TO $300 - $500 LAPTOPS.
Click to expand...

Do you always follow what AMD and Intel tell you to write in your articles? I hope not. Sure, they said compare it to laptops in that price range, but they didn't say you COULDN'T also compare it to the Atom and Bravos as well.

Not sure what you were trying to accomplish with this article, but it certainly wasn't a fair way to introduce Kabini benchmarks to the world.
 
[citation][nom]qcmadness[/nom]We all know that i3 ULV is faster, but the fact is that i3 ULV is less suitable for portable notebook / netbook category.[/citation]
How is it so much "less suitable"? It only uses 2W (~20%) more in non-gaming tasks while providing about double the performance in most cases.

The gaming power draw on the other hand is pretty bad (70% more) but how many people would intentionally do serious gaming on a laptop while on battery power? I know I wouldn't.
 
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