# AMD Kabini Athlon 5150 1.6 GHz - something for enthusiast



## FlanK3r (Apr 14, 2014)

Im tetsing for review now Athlon 5150. This is from my point the best price/performance ration for AM1. Basic clock is *1600 MHz* (top model 5350 has 2050 MHz, this different could be visible in practice, but 5150 has still OK performance). The RAM IMC support is 1600 MHz DDR3. Not bad, but you will see later. And iGPU has the core clock 400 MHz. For older oldschool games its OK. As Quake III. Quake IV, Counter Strike, Battlefield 2 or modern Torchlight.

New benchrig for small machine 






And new HyperX memory Fure





But, what happens, if the right guy has the right motherboard? This motherboard is Asus AM1I-A.





BIOS is simply perfect for some fun.

This is teraser. 1600 MHz CPU and DDR3? No way...I wanna more... 1984 MHz at CPU and DDR3 the same! And still stock voltage of CPU


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## insane 360 (Apr 14, 2014)

cool, i'm interested in this platform, but hard to find people who overclock things on it...

nice data, you going to do more bench's with it?  overclock the igpu possible?  seen the power output is only like 35watts max it seems like an awesome tiny desktop/htpc/whatever!

thanks for the info thus far man!


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## FlanK3r (Apr 14, 2014)

Yes, you can see there OC of RAM (awesome from IMC 1600 MHz to 19xx MHz!), CPU OC, APUNB OC and iGPU OC (now around 500 MHz).

Im still testing, actually Im at 2150 MHz for CPU/DRAM ...Wow. But again, only few boards have in BIOS BCLK and voltages settings. This one seems the right one


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## Tatty_One (Apr 14, 2014)

Not sure about your "Enthusiast" tag to be honest, with just 2MB L2 cache and no L3 cache I think even with a half decent graphics card slotted in you would struggle to play any fairly recent demanding games, although I will be interested to see your findings, I appreciate it's a low power unit, probably primarily aimed at internet browsing and simple tasks.


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## FlanK3r (Apr 14, 2014)

yes, but this combination could be for some HW lovers. Most boards have no OC options for AMD Kabini. This one yes. First wall is now aroun 2150 Mhz CPU + 2150 DDR3 + 10xx MHz APUNB and 550+ MHz iGPU with stock volatges (so 134 MHz BCLK)


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## insane 360 (Apr 14, 2014)

awesome, very cool to have that flexablity, are you still running the stock heatsink too?  its cheap enough for me to justify the fun factor of just tweeking with a lowend but still powerful enough pc to pitch to the wife


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## john_ (Apr 14, 2014)

Didn't knew you could overclock these? Great!!! I could replace later my Phenom II X3+GT620 combo that it is playing the role of HTPC right now.
*Thanks* for the (so far) mini presentation.


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## Tatty_One (Apr 14, 2014)

FlanK3r said:


> yes, but this combination could be for some HW lovers. Most boards have no OC options for AMD Kabini. This one yes. First wall is now aroun 2150 Mhz CPU + 2150 DDR3 + 10xx MHz APUNB and 550+ MHz iGPU with stock volatges (so 134 MHz BCLK)


  Well I look forward to your review, hopefully it will enlighten us, most of the info I have read on other reviews suggest that even at low resolutions and low quality settings games such as Bioshock Infinate are unplayable and thats with an R7 240 in the slot, so I am VERY interested to see what you can get out of this with some overclocking..... good luck!


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## Ralfies (Apr 14, 2014)

'Kay, I'm definitely getting a 5350. I thought the 5150 gpu was clocked at 600MHz?


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## john_ (Apr 14, 2014)

It is
http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/amd-introduces-2014apr9.aspx


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## FlanK3r (Apr 14, 2014)

uff, srry, mistake in GPU clock


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## newtekie1 (Apr 14, 2014)

Tatty_One said:


> Not sure about your "Enthusiast" tag to be honest, with just 2MB L2 cache and no L3 cache I think even with a half decent graphics card slotted in you would struggle to play any fairly recent demanding games, although I will be interested to see your findings, I appreciate it's a low power unit, probably primarily aimed at internet browsing and simple tasks.


IMO, enthusiast doesn't mean gaming.  A computer enthusiast likes playing around with all types of computer equipment.  I'm certainly interested.

I had no idea these could be overclocked so much, I figured they'd be limited to the ~5% range, if any at all.  I was hoping AMD would release an unlocked AM1 CPU.


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## FlanK3r (Apr 14, 2014)

My current BIOS settings


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## Tatty_One (Apr 14, 2014)

newtekie1 said:


> IMO, enthusiast doesn't mean gaming.  A computer enthusiast likes playing around with all types of computer equipment.  I'm certainly interested.
> 
> I had no idea these could be overclocked so much, I figured they'd be limited to the ~5% range, if any at all.  I was hoping AMD would release an unlocked AM1 CPU.


I was referring to the "market", one could argue that most of us here are enthusiasts, however most probably would not buy this CPU, it interests me also, purely because I like to see how these super budget things can be flogged to get every ounce of performance out of them.


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## buildzoid (Apr 14, 2014)

these sound like they would be fun on TEC+Air cooling since they pull so little power.


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## Ralfies (Apr 14, 2014)

FlanK3r said:


> uff, srry, mistake in GPU clock


 So what is your overclocked gpu frequency?


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## Lt_JWS (Apr 15, 2014)

will it run Skyrim?


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## damric (Apr 15, 2014)

Keep up the good work!


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## Solaris17 (Apr 15, 2014)

AMAZING! iv been looking for info on this! keep us updated!


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## emissary42 (Apr 15, 2014)

FlanK3r said:


> First wall is now aroun 2150 Mhz CPU + 2150 DDR3 + 10xx MHz APUNB and 550+ MHz iGPU with stock volatges (so 134 MHz BCLK)


Is the memory wall around that speed for two modules as well? (Yes i know, it will still be single channel.)

Do NB and iGPU have multiple p-states each?


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## micropage7 (Apr 15, 2014)

i dunno with 1,6Ghz its kinda tight for multi tasking and for any apps that need much power


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## buildzoid (Apr 15, 2014)

What's the maximum BCLK the board allows?


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## newtekie1 (Apr 15, 2014)

I'm guessing everything is linked with the BCLK, so I don't expect much higher than this due to the PCI-E and SATA frequencies going too high.


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## buildzoid (Apr 15, 2014)

newtekie1 said:


> I'm guessing everything is linked with the BCLK, so I don't expect much higher than this due to the PCI-E and SATA frequencies going too high.


Sorry I meant APU frequency.


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## GLD (Apr 15, 2014)

Specs. say AM1 supports Windows XP. I wonder if that is true? My AM3+ board does not work with XP, no matter what I try. BSOD every time.

This platform running XP could make a cheap, low power retro gaming rig.


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## Tatty_One (Apr 15, 2014)

Would we see much of a performance hit if using a discreet GPU seeing as the PCI-E is only operating at x4 or have I read that wrong?


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## newtekie1 (Apr 16, 2014)

Tatty_One said:


> Would we see much of a performance hit if using a discreet GPU seeing as the PCI-E is only operating at x4 or have I read that wrong?



Correct, the PCI-E x16 slot is only electricly x4. It wouldn't affect performance on anything but high end cards, and no one in their right mind would pair a high end card with AM1.


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## Vario (Apr 16, 2014)

A good value only for the onboard video, IMO.

Might be able to play circa 2005 games.


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## Tatty_One (Apr 16, 2014)

newtekie1 said:


> Correct, the PCI-E x16 slot is only electricly x4. It wouldn't affect performance on anything but high end cards, and *no one in their right mind would pair a high end card with AM1*.


 Unfortunatly we have some of those!


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## john_ (Apr 16, 2014)

A platform like that shouldn't be paired with anything because in that case it is losing the low cost advantage.
If, for example, you add any kind of graphics card you could go for an equivalent Intel solution in the first place.


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## insane 360 (Apr 16, 2014)

at the price point of under/around 100 bucks for motherboard and cpu, i'm concidering this to replace my old HP all-in-one (core2duo and intel gma) as my secondary pc and maybe a another am1 pc for HTPC duty once my xbox live membership runs its course.

just added benefit if i can overclock it for the fun of it all  

looking forward to more on this!  maybe a TPU review soon?


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## FlanK3r (Apr 16, 2014)

Next stage:
http://valid.canardpc.com/14xnw5






PS: i tried Quake III arena at 1600x1200 with maximum details. Timedemo 1. At default settings its around 155 FPS, after OC 206 FPS!


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## john_ (Apr 16, 2014)

At Phoronix they weren't so lucky. 
[Phoronix] Overclocking The AMD AM1 Athlon & Sempron APUs
105 MHz max bus speed before becoming unstable. 
Maybe you where lucky or they are doing something wrong.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 17, 2014)

john_ said:


> A platform like that shouldn't be paired with anything because in that case it is losing the low cost advantage.
> If, for example, you add any kind of graphics card you could go for an equivalent Intel solution in the first place.


That is true, I'd use the PCI-E slot for a RAID controller, I don't think it was really intended to be used for graphics cards.


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## Aquinus (Apr 17, 2014)

It's worth noting that this puppy uses Jaguar cores. I wonder how the shorter pipeline (versus FX-based CPUs) impacts cache performance and performance per clock. While I like what AMD was trying to do with the whole "modules" setup, I think I would rather have a CPU with a shorter pipeline and Intel has shown that tends to work out well for things like branch prediction and it didn't when it was longer like with NetBurst. All in all, I almost want to invest in one of these just to play with it. It's uses are a little short because of the lack of sata ports and expandability but given the price, I can't really complain too loudly.


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## Dent1 (Apr 17, 2014)

Is there any clock for clock reviews of the Kabini against the Steamroller FX?


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## Aquinus (Apr 17, 2014)

Dent1 said:


> Is there any clock for clock reviews of the Kabini against the Steamroller FX?



Were you looking for something like this?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7933/the-desktop-kabini-review-part-1-athlon-5350-am1/4


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## john_ (Apr 17, 2014)

*FlanK3r*

Are you using IDE mode for the disks or AHCI? Someone said in another forum that Phoronix probably hit the wall at 105MHz because of AHCI and SATA limitations that are also present in FM2+ platform(are they?).


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## FlanK3r (Apr 17, 2014)

AHCI...This was next reason for shock me...But no SSD, classic HDD

Yes, with A88x chipset is wall around 105-106 BCLK with AHCI. But A85x has not this limit.


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## FlanK3r (Apr 18, 2014)

So, Im done with little baby Kabini and Asus AM1-I A. Great board and good small CPU 

*How is it stable? I got stable settings at 132 MHz BCLK!*
The power consumption in load is only 5 W higher than with stock settings . Lets go to OC stable results:

AIDA AES:





AIDA Memory-nice improvement





Cinebench R15





Cinebench R11.5





Cinebench R10





Winrar, wow, over 2000 KB/s!





3D Mark11 Performance test





*And now some fun with benchmarks (not fully stable PC in OCCT)*
PiFast





Wprime 1024M





*Cinebench R15 at 2303 MHz!*





Cinebench R11.5 at 2303 MHz





Superpi 2303 MHz





*Max clock - 2367 MHz *(with +1 Mhz BCLK I had issues with SATA/graphics outputs)


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## insane 360 (Apr 18, 2014)

very cool stuff man, thanks for all the pics and overclocking goodness!


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## FlanK3r (Apr 18, 2014)

Thank you. I like overclocking. Now Im so busy, need some rest time, but we will know whats coming from blue side...So not time for rest now :-(


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## FlanK3r (Apr 24, 2014)

full article from my side 

http://pctuning.tyden.cz/hardware/p...ma-amd-am1-athlon-x4-5150-a-deska-asus-am1i-a


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## john_ (Apr 24, 2014)

You couldn't overclock the 2650 or haven't you tried? I think you don't mention anything about 2650 and overclocking.


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## FlanK3r (Apr 24, 2014)

I can, but this is review 5150, not 2650 ,-)...2650 vs Baytrail will be later


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## chule250 (Sep 13, 2014)

Are you using stock cooler? Do you need any other startup app ir you can change it all from the bios? Great info.


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## Steevo (Sep 13, 2014)

newtekie1 said:


> That is true, I'd use the PCI-E slot for a RAID controller, I don't think it was really intended to be used for graphics cards.


This, exactly this. 

I want to build a small form factor PC in a almost entirely enclosed case, and move my array out of mine for use in media server. I could throw a cheap SSD in and my 6TB of storage and they could game, watch movies I ripped, emulators, and I could have my mapped storage for media still. I can setup a time for it to log them off, and on Gb or high speed wireless its not much slower than real world use now.


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## Vario (Sep 13, 2014)

P908!?


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## Frick (Sep 13, 2014)

I've honestly been thinking about replacing the innards of my HP DC7800 SFF with something like this. It feels like I'm done with towers.


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## chule250 (Sep 14, 2014)

Ok, i tried with the same motherboard, and i could reach stable 127 apu (aound 2032mhz, pretty cool). I notice that it only works booting windows: linux wont see the hard disk at all. I think this could be related to the apu/ahci limit to 105. Does anybody know if there is any workaround for this?

EDIT: after reading, Ive noticed that although AHCI mode is enabled in bios, when going further than 105, ahci is disabled, and you can notice that in windows too. So i think windows disables automatically while linux stays with the bios option and only works when ide mode is selected over 105.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Sep 15, 2014)

IDK, at 2.53GHz my E7200 was able to pull 200FPS in CoD4 with a GTX 760... I'd think it would do around the same with something like a 650...


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