Is Kabini 3850 enough for web surfing and media?

[VirtualLarry]

Ok Shinkai, you are a really intelligent guy but the skype past is nonsense and you know it. I downclock my ancient three core phenom to 800mhz and didnt have a problem. I can run skype on my generic single arm core $100 cellphone without a problem. I extremely doubt skype will bring kabini to its kner

I have personal experience that Skype will bring Brazos to its knees, in Win7 64-bit, with 4GB DDR3 and an SSD. 97% CPU, can't do anything on the box besides, otherwise I sound robotic to the other person.

 

[Vesku]

OK guys first of all I noticed "the Intel mania" since the first answers but I never gave it for granted, I wanted to understand why and if the Kabini was actually slower. I did my research and asked for benchmarks. I was limited to a local Italian web store, the Haswell system costed only €5 more than Kabini 5150 while 5350 costed more than Haswell. Considering Kabini is beaten by G1840 in every single benchmark (graphics included) I don't think I made the wrong choice nor that I have been brainwashed!
I understand Kabini is enough for basic tasks BUT the price was actually on par, so why get something worse if I can get more? My uncle didn't care about power usage that much so...
Are you still convinced I should have gone with Kabini?

With almost no price difference, no concern for small form factor, or desire to minimize power draw the Haswell Celeron is the way to go for a budget desktop vs Kabini AM1. Excluding fantastic local deals like that Microcenter A6 Richland one or the occasional AM1 cpu+motherboard bundle, which then disrupt the "almost no price difference" aspect.

 

[positivedoppler]

I have personal experience that Skype will bring Brazos to its knees, in Win7 64-bit, with 4GB DDR3 and an SSD. 97% CPU, can't do anything on the box besides, otherwise I sound robotic to the other person.

So you are comparing a single core Brazos from 4 years ago with a 4 core kabini?

Here are 22 reviews from Amazon on the first generation of Brazos two core netbook on windows 7 (not even the 2nd version let alone kabini) Not a single review said it was slow.
One person even said she downloaded Skype and made no complaints about it being slow.
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-B575-1...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

 

[monstercameron]

So you are comparing a single core Brazos from 4 years ago with a 4 core kabini?

Here are 22 reviews from Amazon on the first generation of Brazos two core netbook on windows 7 (not even the 2nd version let alone kabini) Not a single review said it was slow.
One person even said she downloaded Skype and made no complaints about it being slow.
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-B575-14...DateDescending

amazon reviews as proof? although I think the everyman wont mind ~100ms slower javascript execution

 

[positivedoppler]

amazon reviews as proof? although I think the everyman wont mind ~100ms slower javascript execution

Here's 135 reviews. I'm sure they're all fake. This one even has one person claiming he use it for skype. It uses the c-70 cpu btw.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-On...pr_product_top

 

[ShintaiDK]

So you are comparing a single core Brazos from 4 years ago with a 4 core kabini?

You are (double) wrong. He used a dualcore with 1333Mhz turbo, 2 years old.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bobcat/AMD-C-Series%20C-70.html

And he also tried Kabini:
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Jaguar/AMD-E1-Series E1-2500.html
Dualcore, 1400Mhz.

 

[-sandro-]

The only thing that apparently got me is that they made think that Kabini could actually be unusable, that it will lag like 1-core Atom or that is not even enough for Skype???
According to Justinbaileyman that's not true at all. I will considering this next time if someone is concerned about power usage and if the price will drop significantly.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So you are comparing a single core Brazos from 4 years ago with a 4 core kabini?

Here are 22 reviews from Amazon on the first generation of Brazos two core netbook on windows 7 (not even the 2nd version let alone kabini) Not a single review said it was slow.
One person even said she downloaded Skype and made no complaints about it being slow.
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-B575-14...DateDescending

When I first got my C-70 NanoPCs, Skype only took around 70% CPU. But in the last year or so, they have made numerous updates, and now it takes quite a bit more CPU than it did originally. Surely you are familiar with "software bloat"?

Just like my Pentium G630 (2.7Ghz Sandy Bridge dual-core), lags badly with Waterfox 31.0. Scrolling is jumpy / laggy, and typing into text boxes like this, I have to wait a split-second for what I am typing to show up. My solution was to downgrade back to 28.0.

Edit: To be sure, you still can (barely) use Skype on a C-70. You just have to NOT do anything else with the machine. No internet radio, no web browsing, no file copies over the network. I'm a multi-tasker, so that's not an acceptable limitation to me.

Face the facts though, Brazos is SLOW, overall, and Kabini's not all that much better, TBH.

(Yes, speaking from personal experience again, I own an AIO with an E1-2500 dual-core 1.4Ghz Kabini, with Win8 64-bit, and it was slightly better than the C-70, but it was still pretty slow, and Skype was painful.)

 

[monstercameron]

When I first got my C-70 NanoPCs, Skype only took around 70% CPU. But in the last year or so, they have made numerous updates, and now it takes quite a bit more CPU than it did originally. Surely you are familiar with "software bloat"?

Just like my Pentium G630 (2.7Ghz Sandy Bridge dual-core), lags badly with Waterfox 31.0. Scrolling is jumpy / laggy, and typing into text boxes like this, I have to wait a split-second for what I am typing to show up. My solution was to downgrade back to 28.0.

Edit: To be sure, you still can (barely) use Skype on a C-70. You just have to NOT do anything else with the machine. No internet radio, no web browsing, no file copies over the network. I'm a multi-tasker, so that's not an acceptable limitation to me.

Face the facts though, Brazos is SLOW, overall, and Kabini's not all that much better, TBH.

(Yes, speaking from personal experience again, I own an AIO with an E1-2500 dual-core 1.4Ghz Kabini, with Win8 64-bit, and it was slightly better than the C-70, but it was still pretty slow, and Skype was painful.)

I don't think any cpu clocked at 1Ghz is a speed demon.

 

[Abwx]

When I first got my C-70 NanoPCs, Skype only took around 70% CPU.0.

Edit: To be sure, you still can (barely) use Skype on a C-70. You just have to NOT do anything else with the machine. No internet radio, no web browsing, no file copies over the network. I'm a multi-tasker, so that's not an acceptable limitation to me.

Face the facts though, Brazos is SLOW, overall, and Kabini's not all that much better, TBH.

(Yes, speaking from personal experience again, I own an AIO with an E1-2500 dual-core 1.4Ghz Kabini, with Win8 64-bit, and it was slightly better than the C-70, but it was still pretty slow, and Skype was painful.)

A 1.6 Kabini 4C is about a 3.84GHz 2C brazos, because we were talking of a quadcore, so why sticking to a low frequency previous gen as a comparison, moreover stating that a quad is about the same as a dual..?.

 

[VirtualLarry]

A 1.6 Kabini 4C is about a 3.84GHz 2C brazos, because we were talking of a quadcore, so why sticking to a low frequency previous gen as a comparison, moreover stating that a quad is about the same as a dual..?.

Well, what's the ST Cinebench score of a C-70, versus an E1-2500, versus a 5350? I'm curious. I don't think that the Kabini is more than 20% faster ST than Brazos.

 

[Abwx]

Well, what's the ST Cinebench score of a C-70, versus an E1-2500, versus a 5350? I'm curious. I don't think that the Kabini is more than 20% faster ST than Brazos.

CB is not a good exemple since it s mainly FP but the difference is about 30% IPC wise for this test and 22% in Kraken wich is integer and single threaded.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6974/amd-kabini-review/3

http://techreport.com/review/24856/amd-a4-5000-kabini-apu-reviewed/5

On TR x264 bench (integer and MThreded) the difference between a E350 and a 1.5 kabini is almost a 3 ratio...

 

[ShintaiDK]

Its silly to use software that more or less scales perfectly in cores to justify its anemic ST performance that cripples you with regular tasks. It didnt work for the BD/PD/SR chips either did it?

 

[Abwx]

Its silly to use software that more or less scales perfectly in cores to justify its anemic ST performance that cripples you with regular tasks. It didnt work for the BD/PD/SR chips either did it?

Thing is that i have one so i m talking out of real experience, i do not even need to point benches but since you have not tested the gear i rely to vaporware, but at least i tested the thing while you re relying on hear say
and to your brand preference....

 

[-sandro-]

Just like my Pentium G630 (2.7Ghz Sandy Bridge dual-core), lags badly with Waterfox 31.0. Scrolling is jumpy / laggy, and typing into text boxes like this, I have to wait a split-second for what I am typing to show up

That's exactly the thing I wanted to avoid for this new PC. I hope it won't happen with Haswell. My uncle has been living with this behavior for years with the Celeron from 2003.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's exactly the thing I wanted to avoid for this new PC. I hope it won't happen with Haswell. My uncle has been living with this behavior for years with the Celeron from 2003.

Then avoid Waterfox 31.0.

To download 28.0, go to waterfox.codeplex.com , click on "Downloads" on the top bar, then on the right-hand side, there will be a scrolling box with a list of all of the recent releases. Scroll down, and click on "Waterfox 28.0". Then, on the left side of the page, look for "Recommended download", and click on it. You should get "Waterfox 28.0 Setup.exe".

 

[Jen]

Then avoid Waterfox 31.0.

To download 28.0, go to waterfox.codeplex.com , click on "Downloads" on the top bar, then on the right-hand side, there will be a scrolling box with a list of all of the recent releases. Scroll down, and click on "Waterfox 28.0". Then, on the left side of the page, look for "Recommended download", and click on it. You should get "Waterfox 28.0 Setup.exe".

i tried many different versions of browsers for kabini finding torch did work best but it had problems. finaly i did find a light version of firefox which does work for me

Jen

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have personal experience that Skype will bring Brazos to its knees, in Win7 64-bit, with 4GB DDR3 and an SSD. 97% CPU, can't do anything on the box besides, otherwise I sound robotic to the other person.

Come on. The C70 is a 3 year old dual core at 1.0/1.33GHz. What did you expect...?

Besides, if you're running x64 Windows on Brazos, you're doing yourself a disservice. Brazos isn't geared to run in x64 mode, as even simple SSE(2) instructions take two cycles to complete and since SSE2 is mandatory in x64 mode you'll be doing a lot of those. Hence you might as well divide frequency by two if you're running x64 code. Jaguar fixes that.

I'm not trying to defend anything here, but things have to be viewed from the proper perspective and having personal experience with everything from the C70 (powers my XPBOX), E350, Athlon 5350, Celeron G1610 and Pentium G1810/20, I know exactly what you're talking about...

 

[-sandro-]

I didn't know browsing was still a problem for modern processors, really.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Besides, if you're running x64 Windows on Brazos, you're doing yourself a disservice. Brazos isn't geared to run in x64 mode, as even simple SSE(2) instructions take two cycles to complete and since SSE2 is mandatory in x64 mode you'll be doing a lot of those. Hence you might as well divide frequency by two if you're running x64 code. Jaguar fixes that.

But that shouldn't affect Skype at all, since it is a 32-bit app.

 

[TerryMathews]

But that shouldn't affect Skype at all, since it is a 32-bit app.

The processor doesn't switch modes, it would crash Windows. Windows has an emulator (WOW64) that converts the 32 bit instructions to 64 bit.

Your processor is stuck with all the limitations it has in x64 if your Windows is 64 bit regardless of the bitness of the program.

 

[BSim500]

I didn't know browsing was still a problem for modern processors, really.

Unfortunately, the more "rich" web technology becomes, the more bloated a web site will make itself with 20-50 "social media" scripts, advertising, analytics, etc (plus web browsing is still heavily single-threaded reliant). If I were building a "green" desktop / mini-ITX to use as a "web / office box" from scratch, I'd much prefer a "2x large core" Pentium than a "4x small core" Atom / Kabini. You can browse the web on all of them (with sub 30w load power figures), but the former will render pages noticeably faster, "hurry up and wait" much quicker, etc. Same is true of Skype, light gaming, etc, which heavily load 1-2 cores a lot more consistently than they equally load 3-4 cores with 100% core scalability.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

But that shouldn't affect Skype at all, since it is a 32-bit app.

The processor doesn't switch modes, it would crash Windows. Windows has an emulator (WOW64) that converts the 32 bit instructions to 64 bit.

Your processor is stuck with all the limitations it has in x64 if your Windows is 64 bit regardless of the bitness of the program.

Bingo. The executable might be x86, but the OS is still running in x64 mode...

 

[ShintaiDK]

The processor doesn't switch modes, it would crash Windows. Windows has an emulator (WOW64) that converts the 32 bit instructions to 64 bit.

Your processor is stuck with all the limitations it has in x64 if your Windows is 64 bit regardless of the bitness of the program.

Thats not how it works. The code executed is still 32bit. If it was "converted" to 64bit you would see a performance loss for all 32bit code on 64bit OS vs 32bit OS.

There is simply no performance penalty to run 32bit code in 64bit mode.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The processor doesn't switch modes, it would crash Windows. Windows has an emulator (WOW64) that converts the 32 bit instructions to 64 bit.

Your processor is stuck with all the limitations it has in x64 if your Windows is 64 bit regardless of the bitness of the program.

No it doesn't. WOW64 is an API layer, not an instruction emulator. x64 can execute native 32-bit code, it doesn't have to convert or emulate 32-bit code as 64-bit.