AMD Athlon 5350 APU and AM1 Platform Review - Introduction

We review the AMD Athlon 5350 APU and AM1 Platform with socket FS1b motherboards. This APU is based on AMD's Kabini architecture bringing the CPU and the GPU close together. Kabini will aim at several low-end segments in the processor business to compete with Intel's Bay Trail CPUs. Low cost low power solutions are key here, but the interesting thing from AMD is, the created a socket FS1b that is actually upgradable. So in the future you can scale upwards in performance if you wanted to do so. Based on a 28nm fabrication process the FS1b Kabini solutions are available with four different APUs; two Athlons and a two Semprons APUs. 

We review the Athlon 5350 APU, but both APUs series have uo-to four x86 cores cores each with a cache memory of 2 MB and HD 8400 integrated graphics clocked at 600 MHz. The Athlon 5150 and 5350 both also have DDR3L-1600 memory controllers, and a TDP (thermal design power) of only 25W making these solutions close to idea for media / htpc computers, small servers, a net-top or two and hey .. excellent for your home grown NAS or file server as the chipset offers really fast SATA3 connectors as well. 

The AMD Athlon 5350 APU and AM1 Platform does not make use of the FM2 motherboards though, please do make sure you pick up a AM1 motherboard as these APUs make use of the FS1b socket. We'll use the AM1I from MSI in today's review. The Athlon 5150 clocks in at 1.6 GHz, the Athlon 5350 is a 2.05 GHz APU both priced attractive at $45 / €40 and $55 / €48, respectively. Our tested motherboard today, the MSI AM1I you can pick up for a whopping 29 EUR. Pop a stick of memory on there and you already will see a posting computer. Up to 16 GB of DDR3 RAM can be installed, unfortunately the controller is single-channel. So one DIMM will be sufficient. 

The Athlon 5150 and 5350 Kabini Accelerated Processing Units come with small, low-height coolers as we'll show you. At 25W the TDP is amazingly low, but yeah have a peek at what we review today and let's startup the review.
 

AMD Athlon 5350 APU on the AM1 Platform