AMD's Athlon 3000G Processor Begins Shipping At $49 USD

[boxie]

How does 2 core 4 threads compare to 4 cores 4 threads? I have a Skylake i5-6500 which is 4/4 cores/threads at 3.2GHz turbo to 3.6GHz, probably paid ~4x the price for it back in 2016 than this $49 AMD part. I assume the additional cores make a difference? Or is the architecture/age difference between the two going to narrow that a fair bit?

so - in general - SMT gives ~30% perf over on top of the core. so 130% total.
2/4 will give ~ 260%
4/4 will give 400%

[ShowsOn]

What the ...? Aren't 3000 series APU based on Zen+ 12nm?

There seems to be confusion regarding if this is 14nm or 12nm. The Asrock A300 CPU support list suggests it is 12nm, i.e. it is a cut down Picasso 3200G, rather than a cut down Raven Ridge 2200G.

https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/#CPU

[Adarion]

If you do that, please test it on a cheap and low end motherboard. These day I say a YT channel testing those cheap AMD APUs on some expensive, full ATX mobo (because it was what they had on hand), which is ridiculous. Not only is not something most people will do, but will also give power consumption above of what you expect from it.

German heise.de had a test already with power numbers, they also explained in the forum that their earlier low-watt sugegstion was based on a chipset-less board (all APU-SoC-powered) and thus was close to something like (iirc) 7 W vs. what they measured with larger mainboards w. additional chipset.
They measured 23.8 W idle (3000G) vs. 18.7 W with the 200GE vs. less in an article in their printed mag (with the suggestions for low-wattage PCs).
(Probably you can downtune this slightly by chosing other boards, using powertop and undervolting.)

link

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Athlon-3000G-AMDs-guenstigster-Zen-Prozessor-fuer-Office-PCs-4591210.html

https://www.heise.de/forum/heise-online/News-Kommentare/Athlon-3000G-AMDs-guenstigster-Zen-Prozessor-fuer-Office-PCs/Re-heise-Leistungsaufnahme-Leerlauf/posting-35631491/show/

(this was explaining B450 vs. A300 chipset)

[sykobee]

https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-athlon-3000g
CMOS 14nm
What the ...? Aren't 3000 series APU based on Zen+ 12nm?

It's $49. These are likely made from whatever stockpiles of (semi-working) 14nm Zens AMD have lying around that they now can't shift because its old.
AMD have decided to make a little money from them instead of junking them. I bet if they run out of 14nm dies they will move silently (or minor brand change) to the 12nm Zen+ RR dies, at some point after 7nm APUs launch next year.

Note that there is allegedly/rumoured a 2C/3CU 12nm die called Raven Ridge 2, IMO that would be the sensible choice to use. I don't think these have really been seen in the wild.

[Markore]

I was thinking the exact same thing.

"ASRock DeskMini A300" supports only non-ECC RAM does NOT support ECC RAM (Unbuffered), unlike many low cost ASUS motherboards, that support Unbuffered ECC for Ryzen.
You really, really need ECC RAM for your NAS, in order not to garble your saved data..

So NO, Asrock, no, thanks.

[arQon]

Oh boy, gimme a MiniITX board with 4-6 Sata ports and we're sold!

What's the point of an ITX mobo when you're going to add more drives than will fit in an ITX case? (Not being snarky: I genuinely don't see the point - especially when mATX would double the lifespan for almost no increase in volume at that point).

[arQon]

At some point AMD will need to drop AM4 to move the platform forward. This especially if a high core count machine is in your future.

Agreed on part 1, but part 2? The 3950X is a *16C/32T* part. If that doesn't fit your definition of "high core count", what does?

[average_Joe]

There are already some performance tests of the new Athlon 3000G on the internet and it looks pretty good for the price tag. Nevertheless, I am so much looking forward to see the new Athlon 3000G tested here on Phoronix. I am eager to see, how the new Athlon 3000G will perform and behave on Linux.

PS: Do I see a new king of the budget builds?

[edwaleni]

"ASRock DeskMini A300" supports only non-ECC RAM does NOT support ECC RAM (Unbuffered), unlike many low cost ASUS motherboards, that support Unbuffered ECC for Ryzen.
You really, really need ECC RAM for your NAS, in order not to garble your saved data..

So NO, Asrock, no, thanks.

Hate to garble your saved thoughts on this, probably because the Asus DeskMini isn't a NAS candidate by design, hence the name.

[stiiixy]

What's the point of an ITX mobo when you're going to add more drives than will fit in an ITX case? (Not being snarky: I genuinely don't see the point - especially when mATX would double the lifespan for almost no increase in volume at that point).

I use mini-itx boxes that can fit four drives. I forgo the optical media usuall, because there's two slots right there, if not three, depending on layout (the design engineers imagination/spatial awareness)