AMD motherboard with a soldered on A9-9820 to offer performance comparable to Xbox One S

[AndreiArgeanu]

Summary

A new motherboard with a never seen before APU appears on AliExpres. This supposedly features an APU that could potentially offer Xbox One S performance at 125$.

 

Quotes

Quote

A nameless motherboard with the A9-9820 APU (via @momomo_us) has emerged on AliExpress with a $125.30 price tag. It is believed that the A9-9820, which comes with Radeon R7 350 graphics, and should offer similar performance to that of Microsoft's Xbox One S console.

The A9-9820 is a real processor, but you won't find it anywhere on AMD's database. The model name insinuates that the chip belongs to AMD's 7th Generation A-Series family of APUs. The APU appears to come with an eight-core, 16-thread configuration and a boost clock speed of 2.35 GHz. The AliExpress sellers claims that the A9-9820's performance is comparable to the Core i5-7400. On the graphics end, the A9-9820 reportedly sports the Radeon R7 350 unit that brings 512 shaders clocking up to 935 MHz.

Chuwi, a popular computer manufacturer in China, uses the same A9-9820 APU in the brand's AeroBox mini-PC. A representative from the Chinese company has gone on record as stating that the AeroBox uses a similar motherboard that's inside the Xbox One S. The statement spurred speculations that the A9-9820 could be faulty dies that don't meet requirements for the Xbox One S. As a result, the APU could perform close to what you can expect from the gaming console.

My thoughts

It's definitely worth taking a look at. The APU definitely doesn't look like anything you'd find in your average laptop. I'm definitely more than curious to see what's this supposed to be and the performance it can achieve. This may also be a good way to see what would the Xbox One perform like, had it been a PC. Would definitely make for a interesting LTT video.

 

Sources

Tom's Hardware AliExpress

[williamcll]

Not the first time old Xbox chips got recycled into PC motherboards, I covered it before.

[Vishera]

Did you know that that the fat XBOX One and PS4 were rocking two Athlon 5150 APUs (in a single die) each?

[PlayStation 2]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Did you know that that the fat XBOX One and PS4 were rocking two Athlon 5150 APUs each?

Well, it's not exactly an Athlon 5150. That was the comparison most people made to the Xbox One and PS4's APUs because it was about the closest to them, albeit with reduced core counts. These are custom chips built to be an 8-core solution for the consoles rather than strictly off-the-shelf AMD parts. 

In this specific case, the CPU here is clocked at 2.35GHz, higher than the Athlon 5370 was back in the day and higher than what the CPU in the Xbox One X is clocked at, by about 50MHz, if memory serves.

[Vishera]

On 10/15/2020 at 5:03 PM, handymanshandle said:

albeit with reduced core counts.

Nope,the Athlon 5150 has 2 modules and 4 threads,the fat PS4 and the XBOX One X have 2x (2 modules and 4 threads)

It's two Athlon 5150s on a single die.

 

From wikipedia:

Quote

The central processing unit (CPU) consists of two x86-64 quad-core modules for a total of eight cores

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specifications

 

Due to it's use of Bulldozer~Vishera "cores" they are not cores but threads.

*EDIT* - That one is WRONG

  

On 10/15/2020 at 5:03 PM, handymanshandle said:

In this specific case, the CPU here is clocked at 2.35GHz

The fat ones i was talking about run at 1.6GHz,exactly like the Athlon 5150

Wikipedia for proof:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specifications

 

AMD's site:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/apu/amd-athlon/amd-athlon-quad-core-apu/athlon-5150-apu-radeon-r3-series

[PlayStation 2]

9 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Nope,the Athlon 5150 has 2 modules and 4 threads,the fat PS4 and the XBOX One X have 2x (2 modules and 4 threads)

It's two Athlon 5150s on a single die.

 

From wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specifications

 

Due to it's use of Bulldozer~Vishera "cores" they are not cores but threads.

 

  

The fat ones i was talking about run at 1.6GHz,exactly like the Athlon 5150

Wikipedia for proof:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specifications

 

AMD's site:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/apu/amd-athlon/amd-athlon-quad-core-apu/athlon-5150-apu-radeon-r3-series

You're forgetting that Jaguar =/= Bulldozer. It is a full 8 cores and not 8 threads. 

Not to mention that the clocks on these APUs were allowed to be more flexible if the hardware manufacturer needed them to be.

[Vishera]

18 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

You're forgetting that Jaguar =/= Bulldozer.

The Athlon 5150 is using the Jaguar architecture as well.

18 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

It is a full 8 cores and not 8 threads. 

You are right,i was wrong about that,but the cores are still heavily based on the weak design of Bulldozer.

18 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Not to mention that the clocks on these APUs were allowed to be more flexible if the hardware manufacturer needed them to be.

They overclocked it with the PS4 Pro.

[Bombastinator]

56 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Well, it's not exactly an Athlon 5150. That was the comparison most people made to the Xbox One and PS4's APUs because it was about the closest to them, albeit with reduced core counts. These are custom chips built to be an 8-core solution for the consoles rather than strictly off-the-shelf AMD parts. 

In this specific case, the CPU here is clocked at 2.35GHz, higher than the Athlon 5370 was back in the day and higher than what the CPU in the Xbox One X is clocked at, by about 50MHz, if memory serves.

The XboxX clock speed predictions afaik have varied wildly.  I’ve seen between 2.5ghz and 3.8ghz, generally marching up over time.  If it’s lower than 2.35ghz that would be below anything ive seen and make a 2600 faster cpu wise than an Xbox.  If it turns out the console chips are that slow a 3700x would be massive overkill.

[Mark Kaine]

Is this the same thing as in the other thread? 

Seems to be at least similar. 

 

May be good for 'budget' pcs. 

 

 

[yian88]

This may qualify as new but is it usefull? i could really use xbones performance at 125$ for a mini PC build but if i cant buy it and run windows on it with all the drivers whats the point?

[AndreiArgeanu]

1 hour ago, yian88 said:

This may qualify as new but is it usefull? i could really use xbones performance at 125$ for a mini PC build but if i cant buy it and run windows on it with all the drivers whats the point?

You can buy it right now of AliExpress . And it works.

 

[ausham]

I have to ask, Why sell this? Who would buy it?

[Mark Kaine]

27 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

You can buy it right now of AliExpress . And it works.

I think the poster means they do not know if windows will work and be able to figure out the correct drivers and such... Understandable but I think it would be a non issue to be honest. 

25 minutes ago, ausham said:

I have to ask, Why sell this? Who would buy it?

You really don't realize a lot of people would be very happy having a really cheap option to play pc games, do you? 

 

 

Provided this works it will be *very* interesting for budget builds... 

[Fasterthannothing]

Hmm this is interesting now I might have to pick it up to mess around with for a htpc. I see the store also has a i7 6400t (yes apparently it's a real chip https://www.overclock.net/threads/i7-6400t-good-deal-or-not.1599936/page-2) for just $188 with 16GB of ram!

[AndreiArgeanu]

4 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

i7 6400t

The 6400T is an i5, the CPU you're mentioning is probably an engineering sample.

[Fasterthannothing]

Just now, AndreiArgeanu said:

That's an i5

Nope it's an i7 it has 8 threads I linked the forum post discussing it. It's an engineering sample of the 6700

[AndreiArgeanu]

33 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

Nope it's an i7 it has 8 threads I linked the forum post discussing it. It's an engineering sample of the 6700

That's an i5, the "supposed" i7 you're speaking about is an engineering sample.

[Bombastinator]

There seems to be this assumption that it will run win10 and play games written for x/86 machines unaltered.  Can it actually do these things? “It works” is not a surety of that.

[Fasterthannothing]

1 hour ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

That's an i5, the "supposed" i7 you're speaking about is an engineering sample.

I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from. I said it's an engineering sample. The motherboard that is being sold with the i7 6400t has an engineering sample cpu on it. The i5 does not have 8 threads the CPU in question does. 

 

ES stands for engineering sample

[AndreiArgeanu]

46 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

*snip*

Then it isn't a 6400T and it never was. The true 6400T is an i5, with 4 cores and 4 threads clocked at 2.2ghz with a boost of 2.8ghz.. If it was an engineering sample of the 6700 then it would be the 6700 ES, the X400 series (8400,9400,10400 etc.) of intel cpu's has always been i5's. I mean it is comparable to the i5 since they have the same clock speeds. But the TRUE 6400T is an i5, the fact that it's labelled as such doesn't make it officially a i7 6400T.

[Mark Kaine]

Ok that i7 is more interesting. Link? @Shorty88jr

[Fasterthannothing]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

Ok that i7 is more interesting. Link? @Shorty88jr

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOS1Eph

[Mark Kaine]

17 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOS1Eph

Thnx, they say something about BIOS and that people who don't understand shouldn't order... 

 

I don't understand a thing it comes with a bios... right?  And will windows find the right drivers? 

 

It also doesn't say what RAM this is lol

[Jito463]

5 hours ago, Shorty88jr said:

I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from. I said it's an engineering sample. The motherboard that is being sold with the i7 6400t has an engineering sample cpu on it. The i5 does not have 8 threads the CPU in question does. 

 

ES stands for engineering sample

6th gen CPU on a 8/9th gen motherboard?  Eh, no thanks.  Way too much potential for issues to arise.  They should have just paired it up with the H110.

[Doobeedoo]

I'm surprised this model existed especially tbat kind of config.