Rumor Unofficially Confirmed Ryzen 3000 series APUs?

Asrock recently released a new BIOS for its mSTX A300 motherboard, version 3.50 "1.Supports AMD next generation Ryzen™ processors". The board currently does not support any AM4 processor that doesn't have an iGPU and the new BIOS did not change that, tested personally with my R5 2600.

So, while there is no announcement, I'd take this as confirmation that there will be 3000 series APUs. Whether or not they'll be the mythical 8c/16t Zen2 + 20cu Navi (probably not) or the 4c/8t Zen+ + 11cu Vega (likely) is still unknown.

 

[GLSRacer]

We've already seen early benchmarks from a 3400G but I'm still hoping that the rumoured 3600G will come out in the next few months. The 3400G performance wasn't a huge improvement over the 2400G so I just bought a 2400G when it was on sale. I'd probably go and buy the 3600G immediately if the processor performance matched or exceeded the 2600 or 2600X. My preference would be for something like a 65 or 75W 3700GE with 8C/16T.

 

[SFF EOL]

The 3 series are only offering a 100mhz increase in clock, nice to have but since they will almost certainly be more expensive then I couldn’t see a point in not buying the 2400G when it is probably discounted as far as it can go. In the UK it launched at £175 I think, now it is down to £118. Any lower than that and they won’t be able to sell the 2200G and the Athlon GEs so I can’t see vendors discounting more. The same thing happened with the 1600 and I was slow to buy and now it is sold through, it went down to £120 which was a great price compared to the competition. I’m now eying up the remainder of the Ryzen range that is sub-£200 to see what is best value/worth buying. I’m still alive and there’s hopefully a few more ITX builds in me yet.



Those Ryzen 3 series (Zen2) look great but I don’t think it makes the series 1 or 2 chips bad chips- the 1600 was a good chip with a good TDP. Obviously if the mythic Ryzen 3600G comes along we'll all be buying it.



I realise markets may be different pricing wise.

 

[chinevo]

6C/12T or 8C/16T is not needed for such level of GPU (Vega11), CPU is not bottleneck in games. So I prefer to have 4C/8T and for example Vega 16 in 3600G.

 

[SFF EOL]

The use case might not be games, but you will still want on chip graphics to avoid dGPU which makes space demands/cooling demands. If you really want to game then you can buy an Xbox which will be cheaper. That said, a 6 core with better graphics is all good as APU. I always thought with the old APUs the graphics were OK (well better than anything else available) but the CPU side was wanting. I still feel a bit like that. I think the 2400G has dated quite quickly- I still love the chip, but it could be better.

 

[Stevo_]

Scooped at Computex
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-3000-3400g-apu-picasso,39555.html

 

[Stevo_]

The use case might not be games, but you will still want on chip graphics to avoid dGPU which makes space demands/cooling demands. If you really want to game then you can buy an Xbox which will be cheaper. That said, a 6 core with better graphics is all good as APU. I always thought with the old APUs the graphics were OK (well better than anything else available) but the CPU side was wanting. I still feel a bit like that. I think the 2400G has dated quite quickly- I still love the chip, but it could be better.

I think in light of all the mitigations necessary for Intel it has slept its way back to a competitive CPU. Intels SSD access score and IPC crash with every sideload exploit firmware change. No complaints here, and the iGPU still crushes Intels even gen11 only matches at best.

 

[GLSRacer]

Another test surfaced showing the 3400G at 4.2 GHz boost clock. So we're at a 300 MHz bump plus an estimated 3% IPC gains for a total of 10% performance gain. Might be nice for anyone willing to pay the early adopter tax. I still think I'll be fine with the 2400G given my use case.

 

[owliwar]

I think the performance wont change much from the 2400g because its still zen+ arctecture, not zen 2.
Here the discounts are really good as well, thats a chip I'd like to have.

 

[VegetableStu]

but the 3000 APUs are still on Zen+, right...? o_o

 

[Thehack]

Correct.

It'll be slightly better clocks. Next year is 7nm and Navi for APU. Well, I hope at least navi. If we're on DDR5 it would also increase performance.

 

[NateDawg72]

So we're at a 300 MHz bump plus an estimated 3% IPC gains for a total of 10% performance gain.

Where is the 3% IPC boost coming from? Raven Ridge was already mostly zen+ but on 14nm (it has the cache, memory, and boost tweaks of zen+). I believe any gain is just clockspeeds right?

 

[Thehack]

Where is the 3% IPC boost coming from? Raven Ridge was already mostly zen+ but on 14nm (it has the cache, memory, and boost tweaks of zen+). I believe any gain is just clockspeeds right?

The latest slides says a speed bump, PBO on the 3400G (boost), 12+ nm improvements (where the 300 mhz is coming from) , and the 95w wraith spire for the 3400g model.

 

[NateDawg72]

Yeah that's what I mean - it's all boost / clock speeds related. He mentioned IPC so I was wondering if I missed something.

 

[GLSRacer]

Not sure if it's been noted here but the 3400G has more cache and the IHS is soldered. Regarding speeds, my research showed that it was hard to get the 2400G up to 4.2 GHz. Most people seemed to leave it at 4.0 or 4.1. The Vega 11 on the 2400G was able to hit 1.4 GHz IIRC. So it seems like the 3400G performs like a delided overclocked 2400G with possibly a bit better thermals. Not bad for $150 (if that's actually what it sells for). Considering the fact that we are currently unable to overclock the 2400G in the A300W, I'd be interested in seeing a head to head between the 2400G and 3400G in the same ASRock A300.

 

[SFF EOL]

Well Wendel says 150Mhz bump for both. I haven't gone above 3.9/4Ghz with a 2400G overclock but I didn't spend a lot of time on it so I'd say they get to 4Ghz without the silicon lottery. At the moment I am paying under £110 for a 2400G and when available about the same for the i3 8200. What interested my is at the AMD CES presentation Lisa Su made a bit of non-specific mumbling about improvements in AV media handling- that might be a good thing as the i3 is a bit better in this regard than the 2400G. It would mean the 3400G is solidly superior to the i3 8200 which could be important depending on 3400G pricing in the UK. I wonder how the UK resellers are going to act with pricing, we have a handful of national suppliers and they all have different approaches, some will go expensive and over suggested pricing at launch, but CCL are usually pretty competitive and switch to discounting quite quickly I have found. We don't have an equivalent of New Egg so you always have to trawl through a few suppliers to find what you want for the best price.


That said all this didn't stop me buying a 2400G on Monday for another STX build, helped in no small part because there is no overclocking and my plan/hope to fit a 1050Ti.

 

[Stevo_]

Where is the 3% IPC boost coming from? Raven Ridge was already mostly zen+ but on 14nm (it has the cache, memory, and boost tweaks of zen+). I believe any gain is just clockspeeds right?

IPC improvement could be from cache boost 4MB -> 6mB especially if line size was boosted. There was also a change mentioned by Lisa IIRC that improves protected 4K streaming meant for stuff like Netflix.

 

[NateDawg72]

IPC improvement could be from cache boost 4MB -> 6mB especially if line size was boosted. There was also a change mentioned by Lisa IIRC that improves protected 4K streaming meant for stuff like Netflix.

Are we sure they expanded a cache? It kind of looks like they just went L2 + L3 = 6MB, which is the same as 2400g

 

[Stevo_]

Are we sure they expanded a cache? It kind of looks like they just went L2 + L3 = 6MB, which is the same as 2400g

You're right, was going off a table on Tom's HW, but now officially from AMD;

https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-3400g#product-specs
https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-2400g#product-specs

Something from Anandtech though AMD doesn't mention(alos claim 3% IPC boost)

"A new feature coming to the APUs is support for 4K protected video streaming, such as Netflix 4K. This is a feature that has been missed on the previous generation, especially as AMD’s APUs have found their way into a number of small form factor systems and HTPC builds. The new APUs also support Radeon Anti-Lag, a new feature to reduce controller-to-display lag input times. "

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14523/amd-ryzen-3000-apus-up-to-vega-11-more-mhz-under-150

 

[SFF EOL]

My position is if those AV improvements are real, they are the most important improvement to the CPU- given likely use cases. I just can't see the 150Mhz making any real-world impact- I'm happy to be proved wrong. Depending on pricing you'll go 3600 plus a dGPU now, unless you are massively constrained space/power wise. And if that is the case, I don't think the 3400G with its likely price bump is massively convincing. That said 3 months ago, looking at the moribund lower end of Ryzen I was worried that AMD might 'rest' the APU for a generation- especially as Intel was doing the F chips.



In a way I think they are, we are on a sort of ‘tock’. That’s OK but will depend on pricing which I think will be £175 for a 3400G and we sort of know £200 for a 3600- or I can currently get a 2400G for about £110. They will sell through as there is patchy stock of Ryzen 1 in the UK, it seems that the resellers are organised and so are up to speed on the AMD road-plan now. Or they just got real when they saw R1 sales and the quick follow up with R2 then R3. What it adds up to is I don’t think there will be massive latent stock of 2400G available once 3400G is available so buy now if value is important. The 4600G will probably be the 3000 APU that we wanted.



I’ll probably be proved massively wrong.

My 175/200 pricing is based on AMD's new attitude to cores/ threads. Customers have showed they like them and AMD is making cores cost more. The APU aspect of the 3400G has less value at the moment now dGPU aren't so stupidly priced, and it is only 4/4 cores.