Athlon 5350 consensus for mITX media build

[daxzy]

I think a lot of people have too much nostalgia towards Core 2 Duo/Quads. They were great chips back in the day and lasted awhile. But their clock for clock performance is probably slightly below or on par with Kabini and Cherry Trail Atoms (and you know how people like to bash them) while having a TDP literally 10x higher. Not to mention you lack a lot of the hw video decode and other nice things like USB 3.0, SATA3, and probably other things I can't think of atm.

 

[Zstream]

What I'd like to do with this machine is:

1. Use network services like New Japan World or WWE Network for video streaming on my television
2. Have emulators for older video game systems
3. Watch movies, I might use a Blu-Ray instead of a DVD drive
4. Have a large selection of music on it

Maybe I'd be better off getting something like a Q9550 and a 775 itx board, throw in a slim graphics card?

If you can get someone from Microcenter to buy you one, you can get a nice board and 5350 for 43$ after taxes. It's a great bang for the buck and will accomplish all you have listed.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I think a lot of people have too much nostalgia towards Core 2 Duo/Quads. They were great chips back in the day and lasted awhile. But their clock for clock performance is probably slightly below or on par with Kabini and Cherry Trail Atoms (and you know how people like to bash them) while having a TDP literally 10x higher. Not to mention you lack a lot of the hw video decode and other nice things like USB 3.0, SATA3, and probably other things I can't think of atm.

Not really. The Athlon 5350 may be close to core 2 duo, but atom is quite a bit behind.

not the best benchmark perhaps but passmark single thread scores: 5353@2.1 = 809, E-4500@2.2 = 814, atom Z3735@1.3/1.8 = 337. So per ghz, 5350 and E-4500 are about 375. Atom is harder to tell because of turbo, but assume 1.5 ave frequency gives 225 per ghz. If you assume it is running at full turbo in the single threaded test, it is even worse at 190, only about half of the other two.

I still have 1 home comp with the E-4500 at 2.2. It feels really slow compared to my SB quad. I also have a work comp with a 3+ ghz Core 2 duo that seems decent in most everyday tasks. (I think it also has more cache than the E-4500.

 

[Madpacket]

I had a 5350/AsRock ITX board. It was fun for a while but I ended up selling it to F&F for cheap. They use it as a kitchen PC and do all the usual stuff (surf, facebook, watch movies, play flash games, minecraft, update resume's etc). It works well as a general purpose PC provided you toss in a SSD. What I like about the Kabini's is they use roughly 30W under load and like 15W idle.

However I recommend at least a A8-7600 if you want a much better general purpose PC. It'll be much faster and still well under 100W in max loads, idle around 25-30W. Good processor which you can find for under $100.00.

 

[severus]

I think I'm gonna go with a G4400 with a mini ITX board. I'm reading quite a bit about dolphin and pcsx2 and people are having trouble with anything clocked under 3ghz. Since it doesn't support more than 3 cores, I'm better off with a high mhz dual. Does anyone have any graphics card suggestions for an itx build like this with 8 gigs of ram? I"m thinking the low profile gtx 750, but there might be something else?

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Here's a 750 Ti if you need low profile. If you don't I would wait for the 1050 to launch.

 

[jihe]

I think a lot of people have too much nostalgia towards Core 2 Duo/Quads. They were great chips back in the day and lasted awhile. But their clock for clock performance is probably slightly below or on par with Kabini and Cherry Trail Atoms (and you know how people like to bash them) while having a TDP literally 10x higher. Not to mention you lack a lot of the hw video decode and other nice things like USB 3.0, SATA3, and probably other things I can't think of atm.

I've used cherrytrail atoms. They feel far worst than a C2D. In fact my main laptop is still a 1.86Ghz L9400 and I am ok with it day to day. Atom Z8300 boxes I couldn't stand.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

The Celeron N3050 scores about half what my ancient Core 2 Duo T9400 does in Passmark. The Pentium N3700, which is basically two of those stuck together, matches it in Passmark but still has the awful ST performance; essentially it's an 8 year old dual core but smeared out over 4 cores instead of 2.

These things are a bad joke.

 

[AtenRa]

I would wait for the new AM4 mini-iTX boards and get a 35W TDP BristolRidge. Added bonus the ability to upgrade to ZEN apus from H2 2017.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Yes I think thats a good idea as well AtenRa..

 

[Oddtechfan]

So I am wondering when they are planning on releasing the upgrade path processors for the AM1 socket. I have a few of these motherboards and at their release I remember AMD making a point to express that they were low cost up-gradable systems and I really don't remember a new set of processors launched the the original 4 and then 2 more that were very slight upgrades about 10 months after initial release.

 

[Hitman928]

So I am wondering when they are planning on releasing the upgrade path processors for the AM1 socket. I have a few of these motherboards and at their release I remember AMD making a point to express that they were low cost up-gradable systems and I really don't remember a new set of processors launched the the original 4 and then 2 more that were very slight upgrades about 10 months after initial release.

AM1 socket is dead. You'll need to move to a new platform for upgrades.

 

[fleshconsumed]

LOL this thread is a blast from the past. Yep, AM1 is deader than dead, you can't even find existing parts on ebay. I have 5350 with AsRock ITX motherboard being powered by LiteOn 19V external brick power supply running pfSense. Nifty little system that I got for $50 from Microcenter, I love it for what it is and what it does for me. However, if I were to do a media build right now I'd use AM4 ITX motherboard with Athlon 200GE, should be plenty fast for media use and you can easily upgrade it in the future if you have to.