AMD Athlon 5350 APU and Asrock AM1H-ITX video review and gaming benchmarks

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AMD Athlon 5350 AM1 Kabini APU and Asrock AM1H-ITX Review and Unboxing ***VIDEO***

I have been dreaming of building my own console for years. Now that the PS4 and Xbox One both use a semi-custom design APUs from AMD I have been waiting to build a truly magical box for the living room. That day has come with the release of AMD's new desktop APU's. The AMD Athlon 5350 has 4 jaguar cores, 128 radeon cores, 2 mb L2 cache, gigabit ethernet, USB 3.0 support, PCI-E 2.0, DDR3 up to 1600 Mhz and is only 25W TDP. Did I forget to mench this chip only cost a mind blowing $60.

The Asrock AM1H-ITX motherboard is the most feature rich motherboard to be launched along side this brand new APU. The board really sets its self a part from the competitors with some powerful features. This is one of only couple boards with PCI-E X16 slot and 8 channel audio with optical out. Also has mPCI-E, two dimm slots for RAM, motherboard header for SATA power and can even run off of a external 19V power adapter. With features like this I can't wait to see what other builder will make with this board. The AMD Athlon 5350 and Asrock AM1H-ITX board will only set you back $100 together. Now that's a real deal!

I am going to try to build a Xbox killer with this. The idea will be to build a machine that can do 1080p med settings at 60 fps solid around the $400 price mark. Stay tune for update.

 

[Bond007]

interesting. The only issue I see from the get go is that these are quad core vs the new consoles 8. However I am very interested to see how this holds up to normal computer use.

I want to see a direct review comparing this to an a4...I know there is a big tdp difference, but I am curious to see what the real power consumption difference is and how they compare real world.

 

[MARSTG]

AnandTech Portal | The Desktop Kabini Review Part 1: AMD Athlon 5350 (AM1) Tested

We could say this is a half of the Xbox/PS4 APU as it has only 2 modules and, what is worst, single channel ram architecture. Good for a HTPC role I would say but no more.

 

[Shadowarez]

Wouldnt a 750-Ti destroy the ps4 xbone with 1866mhz ram and a ssd?

 

[MARSTG]

Absolutely

 

[Bond007]

Wouldnt a 750-Ti destroy the ps4 xbone with 1866mhz ram and a ssd?

Oh yeah. As long is you have a CPU capable of feeding it. My thoughts are that these AM1 CPU will run out of steam while trying to power something like a 750 Ti (CPU bottleneck). Though my guess is it would still beat the consoles, since they are likely GPU limited a lot of the time.

 

[Shadowarez]

If only they would leave a pci-e slot open on a console lol modders would be in heaven. Tossing a discreet gpu would prolong the life cycle of console for years to come.

 

[marquee]

interesting. The only issue I see from the get go is that these are quad core vs the new consoles 8. However I am very interested to see how this holds up to normal computer use.

I want to see a direct review comparing this to an a4...I know there is a big tdp difference, but I am curious to see what the real power consumption difference is and how they compare real world.

Yes both systems are 8 cores. But there is not a lot of games that use more then 2 cores right now. The 8 cores have purpose like the kinect. Also the console APU's are clocked lower then the AMD Athlon 5350. The real bottleneck here is the RAM, both consoles use higher speed RAM, with the PS4 using 8 Gb of GDDR5 and the Xbox using 8 GB of DDR3 2133 mhz.

I don't have an A4 to compare with but I do have an A10 6800K. I could down clock it to a A4 and test it for R&D.

AnandTech Portal | The Desktop Kabini Review Part 1: AMD Athlon 5350 (AM1) Tested

We could say this is a half of the Xbox/PS4 APU as it has only 2 modules and, what is worst, single channel ram architecture. Good for a HTPC role I would say but no more.

Wouldnt a 750-Ti destroy the ps4 xbone with 1866mhz ram and a ssd?

Yes this is only have of the console APU's but in the grand scheme of things, the console don't draw that much power from the wall. Both console use semi custom design that not only give the performance they want but also power consumption and heat they generate. So in theory you can NOW build a machine around the $400 that will smoke both consoles at 1080p med settings.

To top is all off, there is only a hand full of games from both consoles that run at 60hz 1080p. There are more games that run at 900p (30-60hz) and 720(30-60hz) then are up-scaled to 1080(30-60hz).

For people who are worried about cpu bottleneck, don't worry. Most of the gaming future is going into lower CPU usage and better GPU's. Hence stuff like AMD Mantle, AMD TrueAudio, AMD HSA, Nvidia's 337.50 driver, Nvidia PhysX and even Mircosoft DirectX 12 API. The future for GPU lover's is bright.

 

[Bond007]

For people who are worried about cpu bottleneck, don't worry. Most of the gaming future is going into lower CPU usage and better GPU's. Hence stuff like AMD Mantle, AMD TrueAudio, AMD HSA, Nvidia's 337.50 driver, Nvidia PhysX and even Mircosoft DirectX 12 API. The future for GPU lover's is bright.

But for now it is an issue in some games. I only upgraded from a Phenom II x3 710 in the fall. Its a 2.6ghz triple core and it was bottlenecking a lot in end games of SCII and Civ V, and occasionally limiting in busy scenes of BF3, and I can't picture the 4 cores of these athlons doing any better.

That said I do agree that it appears the market is reducing cpu bottlenecks and it SHOULD become less of an issue.

 

[WiseWilson]

look at watch dogs recommended specs I think a lot of games are going to want 8 cores down the road. I wish you luck but I think you need an APU 50-100% more powerful to match the console equivalent. Now I don't doubt this will be achievable but will have to wait for another 1 or 2 APU revisions.