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

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]amdfangirl[/nom]...but more likely, AMD means to undercut them, because as Anand stipulates: We can safely assume that AMD will have to undercut them (if AMD doesn't win on value, they don't win against Intel). [/citation]

Probably better stated for our specific disagreement as "Real-world pricing on an A4-5000 equipped laptop had better be significantly cheaper than a sub-20 watt Core i3, otherwise it represents poor value"

All of this arguing is for naught until actual products show up with actual pricing. I suspect the $400 Core i3-3217U options will be fair game or at least within striking distance of high-end A4-5000 similarly equipped, but only time will tell who is guessing closer to the mark.

It won't be long before we find out who best speculated the laptop pricing game. The winner gets a cookie.

 

[de5_Roy]

i thought that this review tested the apus, not which kind of display/battery/materials the computing devices are gonna use. isn't that up to the oems? that's before how oems decide the end-pricing. iirc when amd launched brazos, they aimed it at netbooks yet oems started putting it in slightly pricier ultraportable laptops, which undercut average ultraportables but were pricier than netbooks.
a lot of factors (other than the apu) can change the overall price. for example, a higher end ssd instead of a 1080p display or an (ah/h/s/p/whatever)ips 768p/900p display instead of tn 900p/1080p display. then there are the different screen sizes from 9"-10" to 15".
with kabini, amd seems to be willing to take more components of the bom on a lower price. that does not mean the whole pc will always be cheaper. that's mostly up to the vendors.

@comment thread: i have not seen this many stupid comments in an article comment thread since 2011's sub $200 gaming cpu roundup where (for example: ) many people made moronic comments on (because they couldn't figure out) why a core i5 2500k was used. i felt a bit bad, so here's mine:
kabini will play crysis 3 better than pentium with hd graphics because it has 2 more cores and all games are using 8 cores today because the new consoles will use 8 cores. yay.

 

[amdfangirl]

It won't be long before we find out who best speculated the laptop pricing game. The winner gets a cookie.

Sweet!

 

[sarinaide]

Different OEM's have different costs and specs so its all pointless, I have seen the cheepest A4 on my index is going to be around $220

 

[mvoinea]

Well, for power consumption this is the best review because measure power draw without LCD and does not include battery capacity. All things equal we can estimate efficiency and power reuirements for different tasks.
It will be more usefull if you include test with energy measurements, because that is the most usefull information for portability. For some gamers who spend all day gaming the 14W delta between A4 and i3 is ,,real world value" but for applications the CPU that finishes faster go to sleep faster and is more energy efficient. And here no question, i3 is much more efficient in everyday applications.
The best selling x86 notebook IS Asus X202E. I'm curious if after Haswell launch will still be sold at only 400USD and at what price will be Kabini equivalent. And if really 14"FHD screen will be available at 500USD with any CPU, which I doub't.

 

[Wisecracker]

Hey, Cleeve?

You're a jerk. Get over yourself.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]Wisecracker[/nom]Hey, Cleeve?You're a jerk. Get over yourself.[/citation]

Words can't describe how hurt I feel right now. Because you matter to me, Wisecracker!

You matter, you really do.

 

[lilcinw]

It is kind of impressive that you have stuck around to defend yourself this long cleeve. Most reviews the author stops responding within the first day or two.

It actually makes me think you are a 'value fanboy' who is passionate about this segment and lends more credibility to your review choices.

It would have been nice to see a response to palladin's MSRP vs sale price comments but I suppose this is all conjecture until actual parts show up on sales floors.

 

[InvalidError]

It would have been nice to see a response to palladin's MSRP vs sale price comments but I suppose this is all conjecture until actual parts show up on sales floors.

Indeed.

Where the manufacturer wants their parts to land in and what devices OEMs may actually end up putting those parts in could end up being drastically different from each other.

 

[Novuake]

[citation][nom]Wisecracker[/nom]Hey, Cleeve?You're a jerk. Get over yourself.[/citation]

Words can't describe how hurt I feel right now. Because you matter to me, Wisecracker!

You matter, you really do.

LOL anyway...
Off topic, I have been wondering what the hell your Avatar is referring to??? I just can't figure it out!

 

[ingtar33]

LOL anyway...
Off topic, I have been wondering what the hell your Avatar is referring to??? I just can't figure it out!

I can't really make it out either but judging by the text i'll make an educated guess as to what it is, I think it's a picture of 2 gpus... an ATI Radeon 9500 and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro next to each-other with the heatsinks off.

just a guess... could be radically wrong. but that's the best i got.

 

[Novuake]

LOL anyway...
Off topic, I have been wondering what the hell your Avatar is referring to??? I just can't figure it out!

I can't really make it out either but judging by the text i'll make an educated guess as to what it is, I think it's a picture of 2 gpus... an ATI Radeon 9500 and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro next to each-other with the heatsinks off.

just a guess... could be radically wrong. but that's the best i got.

Duh, but why is it significant in any way...

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]Novuake[/nom]LOL anyway...Off topic, I have been wondering what the hell your Avatar is referring to??? I just can't figure it out![/citation]

back in the old days, you could change a relatively inexpensive 256-bit Radeon 9500 into a full-fledged flagship Radeon 9700 PRO with a teeny bit of soldering.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]lilcinw[/nom]It would have been nice to see a response to palladin's MSRP vs sale price comments but I suppose this is all conjecture until actual parts show up on sales floors.[/citation]

That's kind of what i was getting at a couple of posts up.

We're all just farting in the wind until Kabini arrives at retail with actual real-life prices.

After that I'm more than willing to engage a value discussion, and to admit it if I was super-off base with the comparison (or to rub it in the naysayers faces if I was on target, of course. )

 

[maseck]

The intel i3-3217U is the same cpu as in the Intel NUC, priced at ~$290. The TRAY price of the i3-3217 is listed as $225.00. Based on the range of the GX series, this processor is less than $75. Perhaps AMD thinking of a different build quality.

I find it odd that you put in two sticks of DDR3 @ 1333 GHz for all of the systems. Since the AMD processor has only one channel, this means that both intel processors have twice as much memory throughput as the AMD processor. This may not be as much of a problem due to the L2 cache in GCN.

 

[Novuake]

[citation][nom]Novuake[/nom]LOL anyway...Off topic, I have been wondering what the hell your Avatar is referring to??? I just can't figure it out![/citation]

back in the old days, you could change a relatively inexpensive 256-bit Radeon 9500 into a full-fledged flagship Radeon 9700 PRO with a teeny bit of soldering.

Hahah kinda figured its something like that. Interesting.

 

[de5_Roy]

i've started to speculate on a kabini hybrid: with an entry level discreet radeon gpu (cape verde class) with dedicated gddr5 ram and 14" 1080p display. an additional dock will add battery and keyboard etc. won't it be good? something like a razor 'fiona' gaming tablet, but possibly (hopefully) cheaper.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]maseck[/nom]I find it odd that you put in two sticks of DDR3 @ 1333 GHz for all of the systems. Since the AMD processor has only one channel, this means that both intel processors have twice as much memory throughput as the AMD processor. This may not be as much of a problem due to the L2 cache in GCN.[/citation]

My goal is to see what these platforms are capable of, not to see how I can cripple them.

In the same vein, do you also find it odd that we included benchmarks that make use of more than two threads? Should I have eliminated those benchmarks because the Pentium is restricted to two, despite Kabini's ability to handle four?

I don't understand your objection.

 

[amdfangirl]

It is kind of impressive that you have stuck around to defend yourself this long cleeve. Most reviews the author stops responding within the first day or two.

It actually makes me think you are a 'value fanboy' who is passionate about this segment and lends more credibility to your review choices.

It would have been nice to see a response to palladin's MSRP vs sale price comments but I suppose this is all conjecture until actual parts show up on sales floors.

But we saw Brazos go in a few desktop-replacement class laptops which ended up a similar (but a tad cheaper) price to a few Celeron models eventually (but had higher power consumption etc.), so I wouldn't go as far to dismiss cleeve's review, just to point out that's a minority case. (That and I couldn't care less what happens to that market segment because I only buy ultraportables).

 

[palladin9479]

The post about MSRP was merely to caution people about comparing different products price's when one is on clearance sale vs one that isn't. Ultimately it's always going to about what performance you can get at a designated price point and energy consumption. Something like Kabini doesn't belong in anything priced over $400 unless it's got some special "gimmick" like a touch-screen, cellular modem, or super high DPI display.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 only boosts a rather weak A15/A7 (comparatively speaking) and costs something like $700 USD (the model I can get here is different then what's available internationally). Same with their tablet offerings. Honestly Kabini is a tablet / netbook CPU, it has no place in bigger form factors that allow for better price/value optimizations.

 

[Ryan Terribile]

This is a win for AMD, IMO. People buying these cheap laptops aren't looking for fantastic performance , they're looking for "Good enough" performance and long battery life. With the Jaguar's much lower power draw, that's a solid win there. Gamers will buy more expensive gaming laptops, and these notebooks will be fine for anyone else who just uses it for web browsing/videos/documents/LIGHT gaming.

 

[Ryan Terribile]

This is a win for AMD, IMO. People buying these cheap laptops aren't looking for fantastic performance , they're looking for "Good enough" performance and long battery life. With the Jaguar's much lower power draw, that's a solid win there. Gamers will buy more expensive gaming laptops, and these notebooks will be fine for anyone else who just uses it for web browsing/videos/documents/LIGHT gaming.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]back in the old days, you could change a relatively inexpensive 256-bit Radeon 9500 into a full-fledged flagship Radeon 9700 PRO with a teeny bit of soldering.[/citation]Reminds me of cutting and rebridging L1 traces on an old Athlon XP. Celeron 300A -> Celeron 450 was still the best instant free upgrade, though.[citation][nom]cleeve[/nom]My goal is to see what these platforms are capable of, not to see how I can cripple them.In the same vein, do you also find it odd that we included benchmarks that make use of more than two threads? Should I have eliminated those benchmarks because the Pentium is restricted to two, despite Kabini's ability to handle four?I don't understand your objection.[/citation]Here's the difference, and why you're a bit off-base here. More and more real world software uses 4+ threads, that's a fact of life. Especially software that is really demanding, where it matters. However, I don't think you'll often see Kabini (with it's single memory channel) equipped with DDR3 1333. Maybe in the absolute cheapest machines with even lower-end Kabini. The Pentium isn't even CAPABLE of handling DDR3 1600, and yet it WILL get the same number of threads thrown at it, in actual use - such is life in 2013. Furthermore, as he implies, this potentially hinders Kabini to a (very slightly) larger degree because of that single channel - at least in some game titles. It will actually be more important with the A6 configuration.

Another way of putting it is that a fixed hardware limitation of the Pentium should only handicap the Pentium - not Kabini or the i3.

On a semi-related note: I would never run anything artificially restricted to one thread, so in a purely real-world usage scenario, single-thread performance of software capable of running multiple threads is less-than-useful. However, as a complete nerd I still like to see the data. I just hate when those numbers get used and abused (not by you), when it doesn't even matter in many cases anymore.

 

[alextheblue]

One more way of saying this is that if you're benching the Platform, it only makes sense to run it as it was intended, in its best form. Capping memory speeds to match the Pentium means adding new limitations to the i3 and Kabini in some strange attempt to equalize things, when the Platforms simply aren't equal. Capping Kabini at two threads would likewise be adding a limitation.

Conversely, putting DDR3 1333 in the Pentium is not adding a limitation, it's living with an existing one. Not being able to use DDR3 1600 in the Pentium is much the same.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]Honestly Kabini is a tablet / netbook CPU, it has no place in bigger form factors that allow for better price/value optimizations.[/citation]I would agree... with one exception. Really affordable 14" Ultrathins. With a cheaper panel, they could strike a nice balance between price, power consumption, portability and heat. Alternatively they could provide the cheapest Ultrathins with a better panel... for those who don't need gobs of performance but would appreciate the superior display for watching Blu-rays, etc. In either case I won't be buying one myself but... thinking about it, my parents never run anything computationally demanding. Not that many years ago ago my mom was surfing the web and checking her email on single core Celeron, which was abysmally slow but more than adequate for the job. The money would be better invested in a better display or a decent SSD, for them.