AMD Kabini AM1 Athlon 5350 APU (FS1b) Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

AMD’s four newest APUs have 1K tray prices of $55, $45, $36 and $31 respectively. The retail package prices are expected to be $59, $49, $39 and $34. As far as I know the retail package will include a basic Heatsink fan unit (HSF). Tray APUs will probably be made available at most etailers for customers who want to save a bit of money and buy/use their own cooling solution (such as a CPU cooler integrated into a small form factor case). Check out the latest USD pricing here at Newegg, or the latest UK pricing here at Scan Computers. At Amazon the Athlon 5350 is currently retailing for $60.

Overview

AMD’s AM1 platform has just blown me away. Sure you could say that on paper the specifications do not look that impressive and given the wider desktop picture the results are mediocre. However, I think we’ve come to take benchmark numbers as gospel when that needn’t be the case because we don’t benchmark in our everyday use of computer components. AMD’s Athlon 5350 CPU shows its worth in everyday computing tasks, I spent an entire day using it as my main PC for surfing the web, checking emails, watching YouTube videos and playing some light games. Throughout it all this APU performed admirably and I barely noticed any lag or stutter except in really demanding applications. Sometimes I forgot I was using a such an affordable system. Okay granted I was using an SSD but an SSD is the only way to go if you want a snappy PC – and you can get affordable SSDs today for as low as $40 which is much cheaper than most mechanical drives. The Kabini platform looks set to be interesting in terms of storage because it has support for other fast storage formats like SDXC and UHS-I. This means we could see a Raspberry Pi scenario where people boot from cheap-as-chips SD cards – this would go a long way to making the AM1 platform more affordable and accessible to emerging markets. AM1 also covers many other bases because it has USB 2.0, USB 3.0, SATA III and Gigabit Ethernet support. In terms of graphical performance the Kabini design is capable of great things, 4K, multiple displays and light-weight gaming at a price point where we’d normally be lucky if we could even play browser games.

The AM1 platform has a lot going for it in terms of features and value for money at its price points. However, I can see the platform struggling to excited motherboard vendors because they will have their margins squeezed even further. The AM1 platform is very value orientated and AMD wants its vendors to produce $25-35 motherboards – that is really cheap. The main reason prices can go so low is because the chipset is effectively on the APU, this means consumers buy the chipset in the cost of the APU not the cost of the motherboard so motherboard vendors can produce cheaper motherboards as there is no chipset purchase and licensing costs. However, at $35 will we even see vendors taking advantage of all the things the AM1 platform can do, like Gigabit Ethernet, mini PCIe connectivity, DisplayPort and SD(IO) card support. There’s no way you can flesh out all the available connectivity onto a motherboard for less than $35 so trade-offs will need to be made. That said the motherboard we have used for testing this platform, the MSI AM1I, is pleasantly surprising. It has mPCIe, a full 16X PCIe slot, Gigabit ethernet, ALC 887 audio, HDMI, DVI and VGA out, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, SATA III and PS/2 connectors. You can buy it today for $34.99 and today is launch day so prices are always a bit higher, it could fall in price in the future. The only thing I can really criticise this motherboard for is a lack of fan headers. Another point worth noting is that AM1 uses a custom cooler mount that is different to past FM and AM sockets, in fact it only uses two mounting holes. AMD therefore also needs to get vendors producing CPU coolers on-board too. As it stands cooling will be important for AM1 especially passive cooling when people might want to use this platform to power silent HTPCs and XBMC systems.

If you were to buy the Athlon 5350 and this MSI AM1I motherboard today this would set you back $100 based on current pricing, or $95 based on MSRPs. For that same money you could get a variety of FM2 CPUs or APUs (the A4-4000 stands out) with an FM2 A55 or even A75 motherboard – these would have substantially more connectivity and upgradeability and probably more performance. In this sense it is going to be crucial that AM1 parts come to market at specified MSRPs or lower, otherwise people will just move towards the bottom-end of the mainstream FM2 platform but it is also true to some extent that the same can be said of any platform configuration – there will always be price overlap between AM1, FM2 and AM3 just like there will always be overlap between Intel’s Atom, LGA 1155 and LGA 2011 platforms. I think the reason why AM1 will succeed that this is an entire platform infrastructure dedicated to cost-efficiency, power-efficiency and general ease of use. I can see the AM1 platform being ideal for:

• Older people who have never been able to get connected to the internet before and need a cheap starter PC
• Parents who want to get their kids a PC for school work or light gaming but are on a tight budget
• Enthusiasts who want a powerful XBMC platform but are worried or put off Android XBMC boxes because of the ocean of available options and the horror stories of rip-off Android XBMC boxes that do not work
• Home users who need an always on system for media streaming, download management or file storage
• People who need a backup PC for when their main PC might go wrong
• Home users who want to set up a surveillance system

Just like the Raspberry Pi I think the possibilities with AMD’s AM1 platform are endless; the low cost will no doubt inspire a community of consumers and developers who are interested in doing great things with such affordable hardware. The low power also makes these a more attractive option over FM2 units in a similar price range. I think today is the start of a much wider project by AMD, expect to see the AM1 platform develop and become more exciting as motherboard vendors, system integrators and other computer hardware developers start to do interesting things with them. Once again we are seeing AMD playing to their strengths and this can only be a good thing for all consumers.

Pros

• Incredible value for money – in terms of the APUs and motherboards
• Power efficient
• Impressive range of connectivity
• Will allow for smaller form factor x86 PCs
• Supports most of the latest connectivity/software/hardware standards – 4K, DisplayPort 1.2, Direct X 11.2, Windows 8.1, USB 3.0, SATA III, Dual Display Eyefinity, hardware H.264 encoding, Gigabit ethernet…

Cons

• Performance numbers will not impress most people
• There is a fine line between AM1 and FM2 pricing
• Upgrade paths are limited on the CPU side, you could add a discrete GPU down-the-line but would likely be CPU bottlenecked

“AMD’s AM1 platform offers unprecedented value for money in the desktop PC environment. Just like AMD claim there is a winning combination of high end connectivity, upgrade potential and highly competitive pricing. This concoction is sure to be popular in established and emerging markets where there will always be demand for powerful, low cost and flexible computing platforms. More importantly AMD’s AM1 platform is one of the cheapest ways to get up and running with all the latest features of the latest Windows 8.1 OS.”

Thank you to AMD for providing this review sample.