AMD Athlon 5150 Kabini - cat, Jaguar or more fun?

[FlanK3r]

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

 

[Abwx]

Nice.
Flank, what kind of PSU are you using.? Because it seems obvious from the existing
reviews that oversized PSUs are negating the perf/watt of theses plateforms, the
1200W Corsair you used in your Kaveri tests has awfull efficency below 100W,
10W could be shaved out of your measured numbers at iddle.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Ah hah, so you can overclock those chips. Nice. Is the mounting mechanism for the HSF the same as AM2+/AM3+ etc.? My guess would be yes - it's still AM1.

 

[NTMBK]

Ah hah, so you can overclock those chips. Nice. Is the mounting mechanism for the HSF the same as AM2+/AM3+ etc.? My guess would be yes - it's still AM1.

No., different mount.

 

[Madpacket]

Edit:

Well to answer my own question and for others' who may be curious, there is no BCLOCK control on the AsRock AM1H-ITX therefore no overclocking fun to be had It's a shame as this board has the best features of all boards currently available. Maybe AsRock will unlock the settings in a future BIOS, who knows.

"Nice, finally someone overlclocks one of these. Hey Flank3r, did you have to set the HDD to IDE mode to get up to 124Mhz bus speed? or does AHCI work?

My 5350 + Asrock board is waiting for me when I get home from work tonight, I wonder if I'll be able to push to 2400mhz+"

 

[FlanK3r]

Thx guys,now Im traveling for next 2 days with limited access to internet.But I was in shock,this bclk is with ahci mode.
The Psu is again non effective,750 gold rock zalman:-(.This is my lowest psu what i have.

 

[SPBHM]

that's nice, it's possible to OC,

what about the IGP clock it goes up with the bclk like expected? or there is also a separate multiplier setting for it?

I wonder if some boards are enough to run the cheaper QC sempron at 2GHz

 

[Infraction Jack]

Could you bench some games with a video card installed?

 

[Xpage]

makes me want a 5150 Kabin for the netflix box upgrades instead of the 53550

 

[Soulkeeper]

Phoronix just did an overclocking review of various am1 chips.
It seemed like he was only able to get about 50+ MHz
This had me wondering if the 2 channel VRM setups common on these motherboards is the limiting factor.

I bet those mosfets will get toasty

 

[VirtualLarry]

Phoronix just did an overclocking review of various am1 chips.
It seemed like he was only able to get about 50+ MHz
This had me wondering if the 2 channel VRM setups common on these motherboards is the limiting factor.

I bet those mosfets will get toasty

You really think +50 Mhz, without any voltage increase, is going to cause much of a power increase?

 

[coercitiv]

My 5350 + Asrock board is waiting for me when I get home from work tonight, I wonder if I'll be able to push to 2400mhz+"

Some first impressions on that board would me more than welcome. Your CPU+MB combo is on my list of candidates for a HTPC as well.

 

[SlowSpyder]

So it looks like a locked (at least going upwards) multiplier, overclocking is done via bus speed? If so, I wonder if the 5350 with a higher multiplier would allow for better clocks? Kind of like the socket 939 Opteron days, I guess. Could be a fun and cheap build, regardless.

 

[Madpacket]

Edit, here's my thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=36266276&posted=1#post36266276

Some first impressions on that board would me more than welcome. Your CPU+MB combo is on my list of candidates for a HTPC as well.

I don't want to thread hijack. I'll start a new thread on my experiences with the chip and board. If you want any specific testing done or games tested please PM me.

Thanks.

 

[pw257008]

So it looks like a locked (at least going upwards) multiplier, overclocking is done via bus speed? If so, I wonder if the 5350 with a higher multiplier would allow for better clocks? Kind of like the socket 939 Opteron days, I guess. Could be a fun and cheap build, regardless.

yeah, at a 21 multiplier, and 124 Mhz bus speed, you would theoretically get 2.6 Ghz out of one of these chips. I wonder what that'd do to power consumption, or if they can do it at all?

 

[coercitiv]

yeah, at a 21 multiplier, and 124 Mhz bus speed, you would theoretically get 2.6 Ghz out of one of these chips. I wonder what that'd do to power consumption, or if they can do it at all?

Beema is supposed to increase CPU frequency, so the overall chip architecture can handle it.

Considering the 1.6Ghz could overclock well at stock voltage and the fact that these chips are limited by TDP above all else, I would say even the top SKU will overclock nicely.

Voltage should go up though, along with power consumption.

 

[FlanK3r]

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

iGPU going still up. I try tomorow last GPU-Z for right clocks, but it could be around 750+ MHz at iGPU...

 

[Madpacket]

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

iGPU going still up. I try tomorow last GPU-Z for right clocks, but it could be around 750+ MHz at iGPU...

That's amazing, I'm loving my 5350 + AsRock but I think I'm going to have to pick up an Asus board to test out how far this chip can go.

Any chance you can run a few benchmarks soon?

 

[DrMrLordX]

134 mhz BCLK? Nice! Where do you think the BCLK is going to top out on that Asus board?

 

[Infraction Jack]

I am saving up for this Asus board and a 5350. The Asus board even has XP drivers.

 

[FlanK3r]

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

 

[FlanK3r]

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)

 

[Erenhardt]

Nice! Almost 50% increased frequency. Faster than Athlon 5350. Impressive. Would love to see how much can be sqeezed from top SKU

 

[piesquared]

NICE job FlanK3r! These look like a lot of fun to tinker with. I'm thinking they'll be pretty popular and Beema could very well launch for this platform and exist side by side with Kabini, just at a higher price point.

Are you working in BIOS or OC utility?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Nice! Almost 50% increased frequency. Faster than Athlon 5350. Impressive. Would love to see how much can be sqeezed from top SKU

Yea, I think the higher multiplier is a must. The OP's CPU doesn't appear to be the weakest link in his overclocking. Interesting stuff, thanks op!