News AMD's Unlocked Athlon 3000G APU Starts Shipping at $49

[Admin]

AMD's first Zen-based unlocked Athlon processor will be available at online retailers within the next few days.

AMD's Unlocked Athlon 3000G APU Starts Shipping at $49 : Read more

 

[tennis2]

Cool! .....Where's the B550/A520 motherboards for them?

 

[InvalidError]

Cool! .....Where's the B550/A520 motherboards for them?

Yup, this is messed up, releasing chips that aren't supported by any board currently in existence without the purchase of a more expensive older CPU to update the BIOS first or limiting yourself to more expensive boards with CPU-less BIOS update capability.

 

[King_V]

Wouldn't support be included with any BIOS updates already out there that support the non-APU 3000 series? Or anything that mentions explicit support for the 3200g and 3400g?

 

[tennis2]

Wouldn't support be included with any BIOS updates already out there that support the non-APU 3000 series? Or anything that mentions explicit support for the 3200g and 3400g?

I doubt that, but I suppose there's a chance since they're in the same product family. Only time will tell. This whole business of "supporting" multiple generations of CPUs on a given chipset is great from the standpoint of upgrade-ability. But when they only release each new generation with the top end X chipset for the first 3-6 months, they isolate a lot of potential buyers that don't have an earlier gen CPU to do the BIOS update with.

I like MSI's "Max" boards (ie, B450 Mortar Max) which are denoted as such to ensure out of the box compatibility with Ryzen 3xxx.

Aside from that, I'm disappointed that the non-CPU BIOS update functionality still hasn't fully permeated the market. If you're not going to release a full lineup of chipsets with day 1 support, at least do this.

 

[InvalidError]

Wouldn't support be included with any BIOS updates already out there that support the non-APU 3000 series? Or anything that mentions explicit support for the 3200g and 3400g?

And what boards would those be? X570 (far too expensive to use with a $50 CPU) and a small patchwork subset of older boards that have been updated and marketed as such, requiring more research than most people only willing to spend $50 for a CPU are likely willing to do.

 

[King_V]

And what boards would those be? X570 (far too expensive to use with a $50 CPU) and a small patchwork subset of older boards that have been updated and marketed as such, requiring more research than most people only willing to spend $50 for a CPU are likely willing to do.

Well, the only one I know about, because I own one and was looking at the BIOS updates, not actually looking for 3000 support, but this:

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

And it's a low-end board in an inexpensive barebones system ($150, board, case, external power brick, wifi card - just add CPU, RAM, and Storage). I would've guessed that a lot of other boards added 3000 support, including the APUs.

What I am NOT 100% sure about is if the Athlon APUs are somehow different enough than the regular APUs to require explicit, separate support for them. My assumption would be no, but I know where assumptions can take me...

 

[InvalidError]

And it's a low-end board in an inexpensive barebones system ($150, board, case, external power brick, wifi card - just add CPU, RAM, and Storage). I would've guessed that a lot of other boards added 3000 support, including the APUs.

The point isn't about whether or not the board has been or will get updated for 3k-series support as nearly all motherboards already have been, it is about having 3k-series support OUT OF THE BOX so you don't have to jump through hoops (using an older CPU to update BIOS first which is a major inconvenience and substantial expense if you don't already own or have ready access to one) before you can use your $50 CPU. In the case of your barebone system, a new buyer is screwed if it ships with a BIOS version older than P3.50 as the vast majority of units stuck in warehouses around the world probably do, just like you are screwed with any other board that ships with a pre-3k BIOS and lacks CPU-less update.

 

[King_V]

From what I understand, and again, this only applies to the specific product I mentioned, they (NewEgg) were selling out QUICKLY, and when Ryzen 3000 series came out, when the A300W DeskMinis came back in stock, they updated the product description to state support for the 3200g and 3400g. Additionally, I saw in the Q&A section that someone who'd purchased July 25th said theirs supported the 3400g out of the box.

I imagine this unit is a bit of an oddball, and something of an edge case.

 

[InvalidError]

Additionally, I saw in the Q&A section that someone who'd purchased July 25th said theirs supported the 3400g out of the box.

Unless the model got a new SKU to reflect the update, there is no guarantee that people won't get random old units still lingering in the distribution channel unless the manufacturer recalled those to update them itself or the retailer is doing the updates itself.