AMD's desktop Kabini APUs to sell for as low as $31

[Scorpus]

AMD are starting to roll out their socketed Kabini APUs for desktop platforms, and it turns out you'll be able to grab one for as low as $31. Based on the Jaguar microarchitecture - the same architecture used in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4's semi-custom AMD-made APU - the chips are aimed at low-power and small-form-factor systems.

The $31 APU in question is the AMD Sempron 2650, and comes with two cores clocked at 1.45 GHz, accompanied by 1 MB of L2 cache and a Radeon HD 8240 graphics core. For just $5 more ($36 in total), you can get a sizable spec upgrade through the Sempron 3850, which packs four 1.3 GHz Jaguar cores with 2 MB of L2 cache and a Radeon HD 8280 GPU.

The two higher-end, yet still cheap options are the Athlon 5350 and Athlon 5150 for $54 and $45 respectively. Both come with four cores, 2 MB of L2 cache and a Radeon HD 8400 GPU, but are clocked at 1.6 GHz (for the 5150) and 2.05 GHz (for the 5350).

While AMD has listed all four socketed Kabini chips at prices under $55, retailers such as Amazon are currently selling them higher than the recommended price. Motherboards to support the chips are still elusive, despite showing up as early as CES 2014.

It's interesting to note that AMD's desktop Kabini parts have a TDP of 25W, which is significantly higher than competing Bay Trail Atom parts from Intel that feature a 10W TDP. It's also possible to pick up a dual-core Haswell-based Intel Celeron G1820 CPU, with a TDP of 54W, for as low as $49, which may make the Kabini parts a hard sell where TDP isn't an issue.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/56276-amds-desktop-kabini-apus-to-sell-for-as-low-as-31.html

 

[Guest]

Can't wait for the Tablets with these APU's in them. I'm fairly happy with my old Acer C-50 tablet, but definitely need 4gb Ram and a faster cpu.

 

[Vrmithrax]

That's a tough place to position yourself... Double the TDP of Bay Trail Atoms, half the TDP of Haswell chips. When power consumption is all that matters, the Bay Trail will win almost every time. If graphics performance and media services are the key, while trying to maintain fairly low power consumption, that seems like the only place this desktop APU is going to have a real shot.

 

[Guest]

It's hard to justify buying a low price cpu when ram prices and Windows is so expensive. The budget is already blown out of the water to try to save $50 dollars.

 

[Guest]

Acording to passmark bechmark list, the G1820 and Athlon 5350 has the same score:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

If that is true the 5350 may be better because of the tdp and the gpu. Also is quadcore.

 

[GhostRyder]

That's a tough place to position yourself... Double the TDP of Bay Trail Atoms, half the TDP of Haswell chips. When power consumption is all that matters, the Bay Trail will win almost every time. If graphics performance and media services are the key, while trying to maintain fairly low power consumption, that seems like the only place this desktop APU is going to have a real shot.

The point of these chips are the GPU parts more than anything. When coming down to low power systems along with budget, having a GPU that can actually handle decent playback (At least a blu-ray or some low level medai apps/games) is significant especially when swapping a GPU becomes a problem. Where baytrail has a slight edge on the CPU, the Kabini excels at the GPU portion.

CPU performance really is not that big a necessity at this area, if you really want cpu performance you would not be looking at these chips to begin with.

 

[VitalyT]

There are also Broadwell-H and Broadwell-Y coming, with TDP-s as low as 15W and 3.5W accordingly, with 14nm process, leaving AMD completely in the dust.

 

[Guest]

Dead on arrival
bad tdp, terrible cpu, and since its AMD there are probably very limited drivers and they wont be updated
(opinion based on w500 with c-60 experience)

 

[Eddo22]

Dead on arrival
bad tdp, terrible cpu, and since its AMD there are probably very limited drivers and they wont be updated
(opinion based on w500 with c-60 experience)

Intel Troll. I bet you wouldn't even notice the cpu speed difference. Nothing wrong with AMD's drivers.