AMD 4700S 8-core Processor Desktop Kit Listed as an Official AMD Product

[btarunr]

Back in May, pictures surfaced of a curious-looking Micro-ATX motherboard featuring a so-called "AMD 4700S" SoC. At the heart of these boards were an SoC not unlike the one that powers the Xbox Series X, except that the integrated GPU is completely disabled, with no onboard display outputs. The board is very likely a means for AMD to harvest Xbox Series X/S SoCs with broken iGPUs. It now turns out that the board is an official AMD product, named "AMD 4700S 8-core Processor Desktop Kit."

The board provides an 8-core/8-thread CPU based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, no iGPU, but a PCI-Express x16 slot that's electrically PCI-Express 2.0 x4, a handful USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, two SATA 6 Gbps ports, onboard 1 GbE LAN and 6-channel HD audio. The SoC comes with its own unspecified amount of onboard memory in the form of hardwired DDR4 memory chips surrounding it; there are no additional memory slots. The Xbox Series X SoC features a 256-bit wide memory bus, so it will be interesting to see if AMD has maximized it. AMD didn't reveal pricing or availability information, although they way this is marketed, the board will very likely be available in the retail channel.



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[Mussels]

What the heck are these going to be useful for?

 

[watzupken]

I find this a meaningless product. The whole idea is if the GPU is working, I don't mind it being gimped somewhat, then you can have a CPU and GPU solution. Without the GPU, I would be better off buying a separate CPU and motherboard, which offers upgradeability. Unless this is very cheap, then perhaps that makes sense.

 

[Bones]

What the heck are these going to be useful for?

The office.

 

[eidairaman1]

The office.

It be nice if these were zif and not bga for screwing with

 

[Frick]

Other sources say the memory is GDDR6, which would be interesting.

 

[erocker]

The full x16 slot being limited to x4 is disappointing for this neat product. Still might be nice if the price is good.

 

[Tomorrow]

I find this a meaningless product. The whole idea is if the GPU is working, I don't mind it being gimped somewhat, then you can have a CPU and GPU solution. Without the GPU, I would be better off buying a separate CPU and motherboard, which offers upgradeability. Unless this is very cheap, then perhaps that makes sense.

Agreed. The lack of functional iGPU essentially kills this product. Couple that with anemic 4 lanes of PCIe 2.0 for the x16 slot - meaning even a dGPU would be horribly bottlenecked and not even a single M.2 slot for space saving. Plus high latency GDDR6 that is not as good as DDR4 for general use case and you got yourself a big F turd. The only half decent component here is the CPU portion with 8c/16t Zen2 but thats about it.

It's possible to get a far better deal going with some small minipc like AsRock X300, adding 4750G and 2x8GB SO-DIMM DDR4-3200 CL16 plus up to two M.2 drives that will blow this 4700S away. Likely not costing too much more (becase a person would have to spend on dGPU with 4700S and prices of dGPU's are still inflated). Even faster and more on par with price of 4700S when going with 4650G (~200) or waiting for 5600G (260) in August.

4700S: 250 minimum price + dGPU that costs 150 minimum. Add to that an mATX case (30) and a PSU (50) and it comes in at 480. Thats the best case scenario assuming 4700S does not cost above 250.

X300 (case and PSU included - 150)+5600G (260)+2x8GB RAM (90)+1x M.2 SSD (70): 570

 

[Chrispy_]

It all depends on price, but that's a lot of CPU to be investing in for a completely proprietary platform with minimal expansion opportunity, crippled IO, and zero upgrade path.

If it had an iGPU it would find plenty of use cases but 2021 is not the year to expect people to buy their own dGPU.

 

[silentbogo]

Why???
No iGPU likely means that you can't use it in an office rig and no extras on the board also means that it's not gonna work as a headless server.
PCIe 2.0 x4 also hints that it won't be a gaming rig.
Rudimentary audio implementation also deters HTPC as a potential use case.
There are also lots of questionable things on this board, like having PCIe lanes on an SoC, but using 2.0 lanes off the chipset for GPU(while the FCH is quite outdated too), and a USB-based AX88179 ethernet controller with its "legendary performance and reliability".
Also, there is a question of how GDDR6 will behave in a desktop environment....

It's got to be very cheap in order to sell, otherwise you won't have any impulsive buyers who'll get it first and figure out the use case later.

EDIT: To my surprise - it is actually quite cheap. At least according to overclockers.ru and Toms it retails for $317 in Finland (probably incl. VAT), which is cheaper than either 4750G or even 3700X on its own.
If you can put up with shitty NIC, no expandability, no modern I/O and questionable architecture, then GT1030 for mini-home-server it is...

P.S. Also note that on the product page a dude is assembling an Intel rig

 

[TheLostSwede]

Looks like mini-DTX/mini-ITX rather than mATX.

Why???
No iGPU likely means that you can't use it in an office rig and no extras on the board also means that it's not gonna work as a headless server.
PCIe 2.0 x4 also hints that it won't be a gaming rig.
Rudimentary audio implementation also deters HTPC as a potential use case.
There are also lots of questionable things on this board, like having PCIe lanes on an SoC, but using 2.0 lanes off the chipset for GPU, and a USB-based AX88179 ethernet controller.
Also, there is a question of how GDDR6 will behave in a desktop environment....

It's got to be very cheap in order to sell, otherwise you won't have any impulsive buyers who'll get it first and figure out the use case later.

P.S. Also note that on the product page a dude is assembling an Intel rig

All the PCIe lanes seems to be from the really old and dated chipset that is a leftover from one of their previous gen APUs.
It's indeed a very odd product that doesn't seem to have a niche and never will have one.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

What the heck are these going to be useful for?

Internet cafes that just need to run forte night

 

[Chrispy_]

Internet cafes that just need to run forte night

with no GPU and 500% more CPU power than Fortnite/web browsing needs, these are pretty much the exact opposite of an internet cafe machine.

 

[Tomorrow]

according to overclockers.ru and Toms it retails for $317 in Finland (probably incl. VAT), which is cheaper than either 4750G or even 3700X on its own.
If you can put up with shitty NIC, no expandability, no modern I/O and questionable architecture, then GT1030 for mini-home-server it is...

Add 90 for GT1030, Then 20-30 for case. 50 for PSU and 20-30 for SATA SSD and that 317 number goes to 500 easily.
A decent 4750G build costs about 500-700.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

with no GPU and 500% more CPU power than Fortnite/web browsing needs, these are pretty much the exact opposite of an internet cafe machine.

Im not sure if you were aware but.

if the price is right, Im sure they could run doom on there too. not just forte nite.

 

[Tomorrow]

Not sure what internet cafe's would run GT1030. That alone costs 90. Others that can actually run games at half decent setting are 2-3 times more expensive but are heavily bottlenecked by the 4 lanes PCIe 2.0 that this board gives to the GPU. And those 4 lanes come trough the chipset that adds even more latency.
Is not the point of an internet cafe that you can go and play all sort of games at higher settings that you cant do at home? Not just fortnite or dota2 at low.

 

[iO]

AMD Ryzen @ 2398.58 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

[t082m4] Validated Dump by ProjectCardinal (2021-04-19 16:53:24) - MB: Default string Default string - RAM: 16384 MB

valid.x86.fr

Northbridge ID confirms it's the SoC from the PS5 and not the XBOX.
Rumour says, Sony demanded from AMD to disable the iGPU and PCIe4 lanes to be able to sell it.

 

[Chrispy_]

Im not sure if you were aware but.

View attachment 205770

if the price is right, Im sure they could run doom on there too. not just forte nite.

Have you looked at the price of discrete GPUs these days? Why would a netcafe buy this in preference to a cheap Ryzen 4300G, only to put a GT1030 in it? That's a more expensive, more complicated solution plagued with availability issues.

Even ignoring that elephant in the room, there's also the issue that this isn't really a PCIe graphics slot. It's 1/16th the bandwidth of a modern PEG slot and whilst it's true that GPUs don't need all the bandwidth of a 4.0 x16 slot, it's been proven many times PCIe 3.0 x8 starts to see impact on high-end cards and PCIe 3.0 x4 significantly hurts even the midrange GPUs. At 2.0 x4 and shared with all the other things the chipset is doing, that slot is of very limited use for a graphics card other than mining.

 

[silentbogo]

A decent 4750G build costs about 500-700.

4750G retails for $370+ alone (and not that easy to find in some countries), and the cheapest way to build a rig w/ this CPU is DeskMini X300 for another $170, plus another $30-40 bucks for 8GB DDR4 SODIMM, plus a semi-decent sub-47mm HSF, cause you know... OEM. This already puts us past $600 mark(conservatively, mind you).
The only few advantages deskmini has over this is size and modularity (and more cache on the CPU side of things).
And if you count the cheapest DIY ITX rig, it'll be even more expensive. 4750G prebuilts also aren't cheap.
I also like 4750G, but in my region the cheapest listing is over $400. Hence, I've settled on a hotbox 3800X for my main rig upgrade.

GPU is a bummer, but if this pricetag is real - it gives us some financial room to wiggle
Hopefully by the time it hits the mainstream market, GPU prices will get sorted out a little bit and you'll be able to get a GT1030 for $70-75 new once again.

 

[mtcn77]

no extras on the board also means that it's not gonna work as a headless server.

Haha, amateurs. It can and it will.

 

[Tomorrow]

4750G retails for $370+ alone (and not that easy to find in some countries), and the cheapest way to build a rig w/ this CPU is DeskMini X300 for another $170, plus another $30-40 bucks for 8GB DDR4 SODIMM, plus a semi-decent sub-47mm HSF, cause you know... OEM. This already puts us past $600 mark(conservatively, mind you).

And 4700S is 317+ and still needs case, PSU, SSD and dGPU.
Not much cheaper even tho includes the board and memory. X300 is around 150.
https://geizhals.eu/?cat=WL-2128880 > 718€
https://geizhals.eu/?cat=WL-2128889 > 287€ plus 317€ for 4700S equals 605€.

So 4700S is slightly cheaper but has no expansion and faster dGPU's wold be horribly bottlenecked. Also is limited to SATA so no DirectStorage support in the future.
Granted. I did not choose the cheapest components for either one. Rather i went for decent (and well reviewed) components from known manufacturers.

Also a bad idea to pair Ryzen with only single 8GB DIMM. That would leave a lot of performance on the table. Plus most SO-DIMM kits are 3000Mhz CL22 or worse. I chose the best one that's on the market. In August there will be retail 5700G for 360 (MSRP) that is cheaper than 4750G now. Tho when Renoir came out i got one for liittle over 300€. The prices have gone up since then reflecting poorly on 4750G. Underservedly so. With 300€ like it was last year the total build cost would be roughly equal to 4700S.

 

[silentbogo]

Haha, amateurs. It can and it will.

Sure 'bout that, the greatest specialist on planet earth? 5 beeps or POST code D6 tell you anything?
Why do you think most servers come with at least something rudimentary, like matrox G200e?
Yes, there are some AM4/115X boards that can post without a GPU (in CSM/Legacy mode only, and requires some hoop-jumping for OS installation), but I have a strong feeling that this board is not one of them (given recent trends I doubt it even has CSM mode).

And 4700S is 317+ and still needs case, PSU, SSD and dGPU.

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Pretty sure the stock cooler is small enough to fit 56mm clearance.
Alternatively you can get something compact and semi-decent in uATX form factor, like Rosewill FBM-X2, or one of many cheap ITX cube cases for under $60. Combo it with EVGA BQ or something along these lines and you have a winner. Another option is FSP CST110(which coincidentally is my new el-cheapo favorite for office SFFs), which can be paired with FSP SFX Pro/Dagger or generic Seasonic SFB series for under $110 total.
Worst case, since we are hypothetically on a tight budget, is a generic uATX SFF case with built-in 300-400W PSU for under $35-$40 (FSP, Gamemax, Intertech, or gazillion OEM and unbranded chinese models with questionable PSUs).
There are always options.

 

[mtcn77]

Sure 'bout that, the greatest specialist on planet earth? 5 beeps or POST code D6 tell you anything?
Why do you think most servers come with at least something rudimentary, like matrox G200e?
Yes, there are some AM4/115X boards that can post without a GPU (in CSM/Legacy mode only, and requires some hoop-jumping for OS installation), but I have a strong feeling that this board is not one of them (given recent trends I doubt it even has CSM mode).

Fractal Design Node 202 Black Slim Mini-ITX Computer Case - Newegg.com

Buy Fractal Design Node 202 Black Slim Profile Mini-ITX Computer Case with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Pretty sure the stock cooler is small enough to fit 56mm clearance.
Alternatively you can get something compact and semi-decent in uATX form factor, like Rosewill FBM-X2, or one of many cheap ITX cube cases for under $60. Combo it with EVGA BQ or something along these lines and you have a winner. Another option is FSP CST110(which coincidentally is my new el-cheapo favorite for office SFFs), which can be paired with FSP SFX Pro/Dagger or generic Seasonic SFB series for under $110 total.
Worst case, since we are hypothetically on a tight budget, is a generic uATX SFF case with built-in 300-400W PSU for under $35-$40 (FSP, Gamemax, Intertech, or gazillion OEM and unbranded chinese models with questionable PSUs).
There are always options.

This could power a network NAS. Things of this nature have self initiate sequences. I hope you are good with running your own server...

 

[silentbogo]

Things of this nature have self initiate sequences.

Self what? Is that a made-up term?
That thing is made out of old A77 Fusion chipsets and defective PS5 SoCs. It's gonna have a bog-standard Aptio-V firmware with half the functions disabled. Probably no CSM mode.

EDIT: Just downloaded a C06 firmware from the support page, and there is no CSM options in menu, nor is there a typical set of CSM modules showing in MMTool.

 

[mtcn77]

Self what? Is that a made-up term?
That thing is made out of old A77 Fusion chipsets and defective PS5 SoCs. It's gonna have a bog-standard Aptio-V firmware with half the functions disabled. Probably no CSM mode.

Don't expect anything, but a file storage device out of these. These are for the network redundancy folk. I rather have this to run a client interface than carry a bunch of old hardware.