Raven Ridge Desktop APUs Come Out Tomorrow, The Likely Linux Requirements

[duby229]

What. The actual. Hell.
My AsRock mobo does indeed support ECC... I don't recall if it had support when it was launched, but still, it is surprising and nice to have a workstation feature like that on an inexpensive board like the AB350M Pro4.

A few years down the line this might provide a cheap upgrade path for people that want a 64GB RAM machine for a hobby or work, seeing as ECC DIMMs usually sell for "pennies" on ebay.

I don't get why it's so shocking.

My personal opinion is ECC should have been an absolute requirement since amd64. So I think this is freakin' wonderful and great. Even if way overdue.

[Brophen]

I don't get why it's so shocking.

My personal opinion is ECC should have been an absolute requirement since amd64. So I think this is freakin' wonderful and great. Even if way overdue.

Agreed, Linus seems to think so as well

https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/VdLMbfmgmGJ

I don't see the harm besides it harming "workstation" OEM's bottom line

[haplo602]

Michael begging for review samples ... otherwise nothing new as all that was already written for Ryzen mobile ....

[Adarion]

I am still looking forward to some Kabini-successor. My Kabinis are still fine, and probably will be for the next years, but I guess AMD is busy delivering to all the many market segments (their semi custom people, dGPUs, RyZen/TR, server Epyc, mobile, embedded segment) so that the low margin little APUs will probably follow later. But those things make nice litte secondary/tertiary/q. computers, HTPCs, SOHO file servers (if given enough SATA connectors), kiosk stations, machine controllers (if given an RS-232 and the likes) and whatnot. Low power consumption, possibly passively cooled, niceprice, enough bang for most daily workloads and still not headless if you want a display. And also offering a moderate GPU power so you can have desktop effects plus a freedom driver.
Also for some mobile typewriters / text readers those might be interesting (combine with a good display and keyboard).

[OneBitUser]

I don't get why it's so shocking.

My personal opinion is ECC should have been an absolute requirement since amd64. So I think this is freakin' wonderful and great. Even if way overdue.

Why?
Because I am not used to this in a market where you have to pay a hefty extra just so you can turn an extra knob or two.
I think AMD has enabled ECC support in their consumer SKUs prior to Ryzen as well, but I don't remember ECC having such a widespread adoption in consumer motherboards. Of course I might be mistaken, but I seem to remember that you had to buy select AM3+/FM2+ motherboards to have ECC support, and those were typically not positioned in the low-end or mid-range.

[Michael_S]

If there was a 12 or 16 thread Raven Ridge APU, I would buy. I don't need a fancy graphics card, any integrated GPU that can handle 4K output for a monitor (someday, I don't own one yet) is fine but I want the processing juice for software development and VMs.

...that said, the Ryzen 5 2400G is tempting.

[GraysonPeddie]

Michael, do you have Kaveri APUs? A comparison with the Raven Ridge would be nice as I don't have access to my Kaveri hardware to compare against. I do have a Kaveri A8-7600 APU and I'm going to upgrade my APU and replace the motherboard. I would probably dedicate an APU to my media/file server and use a Zen+ CPU for my desktop as I have a GTX 960 GPU.

[Michael]

Michael, do you have Kaveri APUs? A comparison with the Raven Ridge would be nice as I don't have access to my Kaveri hardware to compare against. I do have a Kaveri A8-7600 APU and I'm going to upgrade my APU and replace the motherboard. I would probably dedicate an APU to my media/file server and use a Zen+ CPU for my desktop as I have a GTX 960 GPU.

Yes my comparisons will include Kaveri.

Ordered the 2200G and 2400G this morning, arriving tomorrow.

[duby229]

Agreed, Linus seems to think so as well

https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/VdLMbfmgmGJ

I don't see the harm besides it harming "workstation" OEM's bottom line

I don't think ECC RAM on consumer products can hurt workstation markets. Most people don't realize this, but all computers produce multiple memory errors every single day. It might manifest itself a momentary glitch on screen, or a segmentation fault in an app, or even a corrupted file on storage. But whether you realize it or not it happens multiple times every single day.... And CPU designers have known this for years.... Lack of ECC is -the- single worst flaw -most- CPU's have. Most other CPU flaws that get reported are very minor in comparison, they have specific scenarios to trigger them, and happen extremely rarely....

[cRaZy-bisCuiT]

Will the Zen+ 12nm versions have more GPU units? Those GPUs seem to be quite nice, but let's say you've got an old i3/i5 you'd be better off performance wise (except for CPU limited titles) buying something like a RX 570 8 GB (when prices are back to normal) instead of a whole new platform including Mainboard, RAM, APU & stuff.