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AMD Launches 12 Desktop Renoir Ryzen 4000G Series APUs: But You Can't Buy Them
Today AMD is finally lifting the lid on its long-awaited desktop Zen2 based APU family. Using the same silicon as in the Ryzen Mobile 4000 family, AMD is pumping it up into 35 W and 65 models in the same AM4 platform that is in use today. There has been strong demand from PC builders to release these chips, which were on the topics of forum conversation all the way back at CES. There's only one downside to these new processors: you can't buy them on their own. AMD states that the initial release of Ryzen 4000G hardware is for OEMs like Dell and HP only for their pre-built systems.
The new processors use the same 8-core Zen2 plus 8 compute unit Vega that we saw in Ryzen Mobile 4000 at the beginning of the year, but as with previous APU launches, the frequency and power thermals have been pushed up into more manageable desktop environments. To that end, AMD will be launching hardware in the Ryzen 7, Ryzen 5, and Ryzen 3 product lines at both 65 W and 35 W, all on the AM4 platform.
[...] Just to be clear, AMD specified OEM and not system integrators (SIs). On our call, AMD clarified that the market for its APUs is skewed very heavily towards the big mass-market prebuilt customers like HP and Dell, rather than custom home builds. The numbers quoted were around 80% of all APU sales end up in these systems, and by working with OEMs only, AMD can also help manage stock levels of the Renoir silicon coming out of the fabs between desktops and notebooks.
[...] AMD says that they are planning a consumer-grade release of APUs 'soon'. It was stated in our briefing call that there will be a launch of a future Zen2 APU for the consumer market compatible with 500-series motherboards. The company specifically did not say 400-series, but did clarify that the 4000G series announced today was for 400 and 500 series.
Also at Tom's Hardware, TechRadar, Guru3D, and Ars Technica.
See also: AMD Ryzen 4000 Renoir APUs Have Started Invading AIO PCs
AMD Ryzen 7 4700G Renoir APU With Vega 8 GPU Is Almost As Fast As Entry-Level Discrete Graphics When Overclocked
AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G Renoir 8 Core CPU Benchmarks Leak Out, On Par With Ryzen 7 3800X & Core i7-10700K
AMD Ryzen 7 4700G APU Overclocked To 4.8 GHz Across All 8 Cores, DDR4-4400 & 2200 MHz FCLK Achieved Too – Blows Away The Ryzen 7 3700X
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 22 2020, @10:36AM (2 children)
One thing that has stayed pretty consistent over the years is the steep prices you pay for the newest generations. Can easily blow through $2000 to get a Zen+ system. Or you could get a Bulldozer based laptop for $200. If it's ChromeOS, can be as cheap as $100.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday July 22 2020, @11:42AM (1 child)
I see 4500U [slickdeals.net] systems from $500-$600, 4700U [slickdeals.net] at $700-$800. And so on [slickdeals.net].
You can get amazing value at the $100, $200, and $300 price points, but Renoir systems are killing it with the 2x core count uplift. Dual-core Ryzen 3 3200U systems are hanging around $200-$300, but 6-core Ryzen 5 4500U at $500-$600 is a steal.
The Bulldozer-based A4-9120C and A6-9220C which I guess you are referring to are definitely not worth it anymore at $200.
You are getting a pretty great value on most computers considering inflation. Today's $100 laptops can do a lot more compared to the old Atom/Fusion netbooks, and you might end up using them for thousands of hours. The biggest problem now is probably soldered RAM and segmentation of RAM. Many systems at the price points you want will be stuck at 4 GB forever. Maybe 8 GB soon now that RPi has gone there.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 22 2020, @02:57PM
Yes, I think 8G is necessary for reasonable longevity. 4G is barely good enough now. From recent experience with an old desktop (Kentsfield, 65 nm die) with 3G RAM, 3 is not enough. You can have 2 or 3 things running at a time, and it's okay. Open up half a dozen tabs in Firefox, run a couple of other apps, and the system starts thrashing the swap partition. Not sure how much overhead is from the OS, but I am running Lubuntu 20.04, so it shouldn't be too bad. Maybe if I built a custom kernel with only the drivers that system needs, that would free up a few hundred megabytes of RAM?
And yeah, I wouldn't touch a Bulldozer based laptop for $200, and probably not for $100 either.