Ryzen 3000G launched: It's Zen 1 (14nm) based

[QXC]

Article: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-athlon-3000g-with-vega-3-graphics/

I haven't seen a ton on this outside of TPU, they don't touch on it much but I find the naming scheme a bit misleading. I guess it's commonplace since stuff like this happens to varying (Nvidia GTX 250) degrees (AMD R7 300) with other (Intel 109X0) hardware, but I really would have preferred they call this the 2000G.

Or have just not made the APUs start at 2 instead of 1.

In other news the chip isn't amazing, I guess.

[Slottr]

-Moved to CPU's Motherboards and Memory-

 

Please follow the posting guidelines for tech news.

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, QXC said:

they don't touch on it much but I find the naming scheme a bit misleading

it's new so it won't work with older BIOS versions, naming 3000 to imply that it's only gonna work with motherboards up to date out of the box is a good thing, even if the generation of the microarchitecture is wrong. Also Overclocking added so another digit in the name.

[steelo]

7 minutes ago, QXC said:

Article: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-athlon-3000g-with-vega-3-graphics/

I haven't seen a ton on this outside of TPU, they don't touch on it much but I find the naming scheme a bit misleading. I guess it's commonplace since stuff like this happens to varying (Nvidia GTX 250) degrees (AMD R7 300) with other (Intel 109X0) hardware, but I really would have preferred they call this the 2000G.

Or have just not made the APUs start at 2 instead of 1.

In other news the chip isn't amazing, I guess.

Its the lowest end Ryzen 2c/4t to replace the Athlon 200GE so it's as 'budget oriented' as can be. For $49, it is a pretty good bargain if all you need is a basic computer. Heck, I might build my dad one since he's still using a Athlon X2...LOL

[Sorenson]

Don't they always do this with their APU's? they are always running on the previous gen design just like their mobile chips. 

[QXC]

2 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

Don't they always do this with their APU's? they are always running on the previous gen design just like their mobile chips. 

This is two generations back instead of one.

[TVwazhere]

11 minutes ago, QXC said:

In other news the chip isn't amazing, I guess.

$50

2C/4T

UNLOCKED

 

It's the unlocked nature of this CPU that makes it special. It makes a killer budget gaming CPU for systemsunder $500

[Spotty]

Quote

Ryzen 3000G launched:

*Athlon 3000G.

 

So it's an Athlon 240GE with a price drop? Or am I missing something?

[steelo]

Just now, TVwazhere said:

$50

2C/4T

UNLOCKED

 

It's the unlocked nature of this CPU that makes it special. It makes a killer budget gaming CPU for systemsunder $500

Absolutely, perfect for a lot of esports titles.

[TVwazhere]

Just now, Spotty said:

*Athlon 3000G.

 

So it's an Athlon 240GE with a price drop? Or am I missing something?

1 minute ago, TVwazhere said:

UNLOCKED

Previous Athlons were locked

 

[Spotty]

Just now, TVwazhere said:

Previous Athlons were locked

I see.
Well, I guess that and the price drop is nice. (the Athlon 240GE is currently $62 on Amazon, not the $80 MSRP listed in the article).

[steelo]

I find these low end CPU's to be more interesting than the high end Ryzen 9/i9's...Anyways, it would make a great sub $300 machine for somebody who just needs a PC for email and light office work. With the integrated graphics, it's probably capable of playing titles like world of warships and CSGO at respectable frame rates. 

[Medicate]

Sounds like a nice little thing but it's also amazing how much old ryzen chips have fallen in price at some retailers. I could pick up a Ryzen 3 1200 for 50€ right now so this cpu has to be even cheaper to make it worth.

[steelo]

7 minutes ago, Medicate said:

Sounds like a nice little thing but it's also amazing how much old ryzen chips have fallen in price at some retailers. I could pick up a Ryzen 3 1200 for 50€ right now so this cpu has to be even cheaper to make it worth.

Remember, the 3000g also includes integrated graphics. A R3 1200 would be a heck of a bargain, if you already have a dedicated graphics card laying around.

[Plutosaurus]

There's no way I would buy that cpu for anything but an office PC.

 

Budget gaming you are absolutely better off with the used market, a 2/4 is throwing away money.

 

Imo of course.

[steelo]

7 minutes ago, Plutosaurus said:

There's no way I would buy that cpu for anything but an office PC.

 

Budget gaming you are absolutely better off with the used market, a 2/4 is throwing away money.

 

Imo of course.

I'm sure it would be okay for light gaming/office machine, but I'm curious what graphics card would pair well with it.

[Plutosaurus]

41 minutes ago, steelo said:

I'm sure it would be okay for light gaming/office machine, but I'm curious what graphics card would pair well with it.

Used RX 560/ GeForce 970 max imo. Games that don't care about cores are usually old and not graphics intensive anyway, and games that do probably also need more GPU but it's a moot point.

 

Spending more than $100 on a GPU for this setup would benefit more from shifting money to the CPU instead.

 

[QXC]

18 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

$50

2C/4T

UNLOCKED

 

It's the unlocked nature of this CPU that makes it special. It makes a killer budget gaming CPU for systemsunder $500

It's unlocked, but it's zen 1 so the overclocking potential is kinda damp squib. Yeah there's SOME headroom but it requires an OC to kinda compete against a similarly priced intel chip.

[TVwazhere]

17 minutes ago, QXC said:

It's unlocked, but it's zen 1 so the overclocking potential is kinda damp squib. Yeah there's SOME headroom but it requires an OC to kinda compete against a similarly priced intel chip.

Assuming it's competing against the G5400, which is the only CPU that price and spec wise seem to match it

Which is currently $10 more than the 3000G's MSRP of $49

Quote

Thanks to its unlocked multiplier, overclocking the Athlon 3000G is easy, and worked well. We reached 4.0 GHz within minutes with only minor voltage increases. Reaching 4.1 GHz required well over 1.4 V, and 4.2 GHz was never stable despite high voltage and 240 mm AIO watercooling.

GPU overclocking is possible through the motherboard BIOS (Wattman in Radeon Settings is not available on the Athlon 3000G). We saw amazing overclocking potential that let us go from the default GPU frequency of 1,100 MHz up to 1,660 MHz, at which point we started seeing rendering artifacts in games. This is a 50% clock increase—very impressive.

Overclocking the chip gets you into G5600 performance territory, which at the time of this post is a $95 CPU. Not to mention nearly across the board the Vega 3 graphics outperform UHD630. Discrete GPU performance puts a G5600 relatively ahead of the 3000G across the board, but assuming you have the budget for that, you're probably not looking at $50 CPUs anyways.

Quote

The biggest highlight of the Athlon 3000G is without any doubt its price. For $49 you get a capable CPU that can handle typical consumer tasks just fine—perfect for an entry-level system that doesn't break the bank. Right now, Intel is having serious supply issues, which drives up their CPU prices, helping AMD's offerings. Looking at what the Athlon 3000G offers, it beats all comparable Intel offerings easily. The only interesting Intel CPU here is the more expensive Core i3-9100F, which has much better CPU performance, but does require a discrete graphics card ("F" means "no integrated graphics"), so that could be an alternative for a gaming-focused system with a graphics card. If you want more CPU performance with integrated graphics, the Ryzen 3 3200G is a good option; slightly more expensive, but with four physical cores and much faster integrated graphics.

[weeblord]

19 hours ago, QXC said:

but I really would have preferred they call this the 2000G.

But wouldn't that have made it seem outdated? I mean it does run on Zen 1 architecture after all, but I would have called it the 3000G as well because it's the most basic out of all of the Ryzen 3 processors.

[Plutosaurus]

With the 1600 being $90, and the 2600 being $110, it's really hard to make any type of gaming argument for this chip. As far as a no dGPU application, the integrated graphics are bad, and the 2200g has it beat at only $77 as well as being an actual quad core. 

 

As far as "cheap office PC" I believe just buying an OEM pre-built is a better value anyway vs. building. You not only typically get better deals vs pricing out a parts list, you also get software. The corners the OEMs cut, in this scenario, generally don't matter for the intended use.

 

As far as "overclocking" potential, the chances are this is going on the cheapest motherboard possible which means no or little OC. Slotting this into a high end board would be silly. I would consider this feature useless for practical application.

 

I'm not sure what purpose this serves on the consumer builder market other than to be purchased in bulk and used in OEM machines.

 

I would never recommend this or any of the Athlon chips except for very niche specific applications, such as building a custom small form factor with a specific case for a very specific use.

[1van]

23 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

Previous Athlons were locked

 

Previous Athlons were locked officially, but most of the boards can overclock them using a certain AGESA version, 0.0.7.2 I believe. Mine could do 3,9GHz and 3466MHz memory, quite a nice boost)

The multiplier OC is unlocked in a previous version, but memory OC is locked to 2666MHz there.

And the newer AGESA versions lock the multiplier OC for Athlon 2xx, but memory OC is still possible.

Unfortunately, these intermediate AGESA version BIOSes are available not for every board.

 

Of course, having an officially unlocked Zen+ based Athlon chip is better

[porina]

We have a conflict here. In a quick look, TPU and wikichip state this is 14nm Zen "Raven Ridge" but Anandtech and CPU-Z (screenshot in TPU's article) claim it is based on 12nm Zen+ "Picaso". Gonna see if I can get a more definitive clarification.

[QXC]

6 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

Assuming it's competing against the G5400, which is the only CPU that price and spec wise seem to match it

<snip>

Which is currently $10 more than the 3000G's MSRP of $49

 

Overclocking the chip gets you into G5600 performance territory, which at the time of this post is a $95 CPU. Not to mention nearly across the board the Vega 3 graphics outperform UHD630. Discrete GPU performance puts a G5600 relatively ahead of the 3000G across the board, but assuming you have the budget for that, you're probably not looking at $50 CPUs anyways.

So, I don't entirely agree with TPU's conclusion based on their own benchmarks. So maybe I'm missing something.

The basic CPU tests still come in behind the G5600 on average, with some exceptions. IGP performance was ahead of intel as one might expect (Although both systems were running high end ram for sake of even comparison) but also WAY behind the 3200G.

Unfortunately they don't have a G5400 to compare against, and the price premium of the G5600 makes it look awful in everything price wise. But in this price range even a few dollars can make a massive difference in value and/or performance. At this particular moment in time, one can get a Ryzen 1500X (4C8T) on Amazon for $69, or if you are blessed enough to be within range of a microcenter you can pick up a 2200G for $59. I feel like the performance boost in those instances is worth stretching the budget, or waiting for sales.

 

All of that being said, while the 3000G is a competitive chip, I don't feel like it warrants a glaring recommendation. It should be about even with a G5400. Mildly faster if you OC, much faster for IGP, but also stomped on by chips mildly more expensive than it. Even the text in the review kinda comes to this conclusion:

Quote

If you want more CPU performance with integrated graphics, the Ryzen 3 3200G is a good option; slightly more expensive, but with four physical cores and much faster integrated graphics.

But as for beating the Intel offering easily, I'd argue it's more of a toss up outside of IGP.

Worth noting that all of the better value options in similar price range are AMD, the G5400 is the ONLY thing intel has on the low end that remotely makes sense.

55 minutes ago, porina said:

We have a conflict here. In a quick look, TPU and wikichip state this is 14nm Zen "Raven Ridge" but Anandtech and CPU-Z (screenshot in TPU's article) claim it is based on 12nm Zen+ "Picaso". Gonna see if I can get a more definitive clarification.

TPU claimed verifying with AMD, and the awful frequency scaling would indicate Zen 1. Totally worth the clarification though, since it would make the naming way less obnoxious if it was zen+.

[superwolfkin]

Is there any idea when we're getting this in Canada? I can't seem to find it anywhere