AMD Athlon 5350 APU On Linux

[dungeon]

I just found out about this: http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-120-power-kit
Pricey, but seems a good solutions for motherboards that don't support direct DC input (ie everyone but that asrock).

Yep and picos are more efficient, with standard psus people mostly get ~13.5W at idle, but look what dutchs gets with 150w picopsu and Athlon 5350 at idle:

Power Consumption: Idle

The graph below shows the average idle consumption, measured over a period of five minutes. Note: this is the power consumption of the complete test systems.

Striking: idle shows the AMD platform still clearly more efficient than the Intel sign: less than 10 watts we measure

http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/5330/27/amd-am1-vs-intel-bay-trail-d-review-goedkope-desktopplatforms-stroomverbruik-idle

And also we have here something interesting to see - Bay Trail J1900 system unexpectedly consume more watts at idle .

[molecule-eye]

I was THIS close to buying one of these for an HTPC and very light gaming. But this thing looks terrible! I'd rather take on a little extra TDP and get a dirt cheap Richland A4-4000 for the same price (motherboards are more expensive) and have an upgrade path to the fastest FM2+ processor in the future, whatever it may be. I compared two builds and the Richland build with better case, mobo, and RAM costs 70 euros more. I think I can swallow that.

[tuke81]

Actually the problem is the current dearth of decently efficient SFX PSUs, the only model Newegg has is the Silverstone ST45SF-G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817256084 who's bi problem is that it's capable of 450w output, at max load without a dedicated GPU you won't even reach 1/4th the max load of the ST45SF-G which will cause it to run less efficient then most would like as you won't be drawing enough power for it to fall into the sweet spot for efficiency. I wonder if the 9w and under chips could even get that PSU to realize it's even been turned on.

Yes, I'm aware some of you think that a PSU's rating is what it's pulling from the wall...

Yeah, 450W psu for 25W soc is like a shooting fly with a tank(it could run easily dozen of them). There is no really good low power psus out there, maybe seasonic tfx psus like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151113 , same series has 250W model too. I would like to see some 100W-150w gold/platinium rated sfx/tfx psu, for this kind of stuff(I'm not so keen on picopsus).

[molecule-eye]

Yeah, 450W psu for 25W soc is like a shooting fly with a tank(it could run easily dozen of them). There is no really good low power psus out there, maybe seasonic tfx psus like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151113 , same series has 250W model too. I would like to see some 100W-150w gold/platinium rated sfx/tfx psu, for this kind of stuff(I'm not so keen on picopsus).

Not a huge fan of pico psus either since they require an external brick. But there are open frame psu options intended for computer use that fit the bill nicely. The only downside is that you may have to secure such a unit in some makeshift way, like with velcro or tape. Check eg http://www.sparklepower.com/proOpenFrameInverter.html

[fritsch]

Concerning the HD decoding performance:

There is Sintel and other free movies in h264 available, use mpv or mplayer (vaapi) or xbmc or whatever and compare the CPU usage while decoding:

- 1080p24 H264 [email protected] High
- 1080p24 H264 [email protected] High xy Reframes

- 4K decoding (on nvidia and intel)

All those samples can be synthetically generated with e.g. ffmpeg or handbrake - whatever you like.

via vdpau on:
nvidia, amd oss

via vaapi on:
intel

via CPU on:
fglrx :-)

Let every video run three times and average cpu usage and count dropped frames.

[brent]

Concerning the HD decoding performance:

There is Sintel and other free movies in h264 available, use mpv or mplayer (vaapi) or xbmc or whatever and compare the CPU usage while decoding:

mpv also supports vaapi these days, and much better than the old mplayer patchset ever did.

- 1080p24 H264 [email protected] High
- 1080p24 H264 [email protected] High xy Reframes

- 4K decoding (on nvidia and intel)

It might be interesting to also test high FPS files. Until some time ago Radeon UVD had performance issues and couldn't really decode H.264 1080p50/p60 reliably.

[fritsch]

Yes - all known. I only wanted to emphasize that mplayer needs patching to support vaapi.

mpv is probably the player with the most efficient implemented codecs as a desktop player (vdpau interop, vaapi and so on) ...

Btw. your 1080p50 should be fixed. That patch was backported to stable mesa and is integrated in mesa 10.1 via: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mes...4edc2ab6d8b5c9

On my E350 I am able to decode 1080p60 after that patch (in xbmc) - so mpv should be the same.

[blackiwid]

how could it even theoreticaly possible that a E-350 has the same Benchmark Score in John the Ripper (MD5) than a E5350?

I think there must be a very big Bios-Bug or something, where Kabini stays downclocked at 800mhz while the Tests run.

[lima]

Let's say you want a cheap, powerful enough computer to browse the web, watch videos, play lightweight games, etc. (For example, you are poor, or you want to give cheap computers to poor people, or whatever). In terms of hardware and software, clearly x86 is the winner, because x86 hardware is powerful and flexible, but also because of the propietary software that is unsupported by other archs. But ARM is a VERY good alternative if you don't have/need/care about all that power, and the Chromebooks show that.
THAT is exactly what I'm talking about: AMD is not only trying to compete agains Intel, but also, they are now, and will in the near future, compete against ARM. From that point of view, is stupid to try to sell cheap but not-so-powerful x86 hardware, when you have way cheaper alternatives that can do exactly the same... they market these APUs as cheap computers for 3rd world countries, and that strategy is doomed, IMO. Even worse, with these APUs and the new AM1 socket, they are wasting even more resources, because, judging by benchmarks, this APU is similar, if not the same as the A6-5200.

There is still no widely (to go in store and buy one) available ARM solutions like this one. There could be in future and provided by AMD themselves. It could also be on the same AM1 platform, ARM cores + AMD uncore.

[Kivada]

Yeah, 450W psu for 25W soc is like a shooting fly with a tank(it could run easily dozen of them). There is no really good low power psus out there, maybe seasonic tfx psus like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151113 , same series has 250W model too. I would like to see some 100W-150w gold/platinium rated sfx/tfx psu, for this kind of stuff(I'm not so keen on picopsus).

Yeah, but then you have the problem of finding a TFX case, so unless you have one of those Dell or HP buisness mini cases you are SOL unless you don't mind cutting a hole in the side of a standard case to allow you to plug it in.