AMD Athlon Pro 200GE Detailed: An Extremely Cut-down "Raven Ridge" at $55

[btarunr]

AMD is giving finishing touches to its Athlon Pro 200GE socket AM4 SoC, which it could position against Intel's $50-ish Celeron LGA1151 SKUs. Leaked slides by PCEva reveals that it's a heavily cut-down 14 nm "Raven Ridge" die. For starters, unlike previous-generation Athlon-branded products on platforms such as FM2, the Athlon 200GE won't lack integrated graphics. Only 3 out of 11 Vega NGCUs will be enabled, translating to 192 stream processors, which should be enough for desktop, 2D, and video acceleration, but not serious gaming, even at low resolutions.

The CPU config is 2-core/4-thread, with 512 KB L2 cache per core, and 4 MB shared L3 cache. The CPU is clocked at 3.20 GHz, with no Precision Boost features. You still get GuardMI commercial-grade hardware security features. There is a big catch with one of its uncore components. The PCIe root-complex only supports PCI-Express 3.0 x4 out of your motherboard's topmost x16 slot, not even x8. Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs already offer a crippled x8 connectivity through this slot. AMD claims that the Athlon 200GE will be "up to 19 percent faster" than Intel Pentium G4560 at productivity work. When it launches on 6th September with market availability from 18th September, the Athlon Pro 200GE will be priced at USD $55.



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[Frick]

Precision boost would have been nice, but that would cannibilze the more expensive stuff I guess.

PCIe 4x is fine as long as you don't run anything faster than a GTX1080, which would be silly anyway (unless doing GPU heavy work of course).

 

[londiste]

Cinebench -3% compared to G4560. That is pretty good considering G4560 runs at 3.5 GHz vs 200GE's 3.2 GHz. I wonder if it is more cache or Ryzen's better SMT.
Graphics performance difference is not surprising, 192sp vs 96sp. I am really-really curious though how it compares to 192sp UHD630.

The yields must be pretty good if they only now have 200k chips that have to be cut down this far. 20k/month is probably a good variable to indicate yield

 

[dj-electric]

PCIe X4 is a mistake, X8 should've helped for a lot more applications

 

[silentbogo]

Well, the only thing that may save it, is a 35W TDP.
Otherwise it's not much faster than current Bristol ridge offerings and even has a weaker iGPU than its predecessors (old R7 graphics is about 40-50% slower than Vega8, but in theory faster than this Vega3). A8-9600 is probably the best competitor out of three, 'cause it's a quad-core(dual-module) CPU with a much faster iGP and comparable price tag.
BTW, it's the first time I see my retail price lower than the US. It retails at $60-65 in states, and I can get one right now for $53, and it's not even on sale....

P.S. They should've named it Sempron 200LE, cause you can't go any lower....

 

[GoldenX]

P.S. They should've named it Sempron 200LE, cause you can't go any lower....

Single core with SMT, and a single Vega core.

 

[silentbogo]

Single core with SMT, and a single Vega core.

That would be hilarious

 

[dj-electric]

Also, the comparison to the old G4560 is somewhat odd. The G5400 should've been there

 

[HimymCZe]

PCIe X4 is a mistake, X8 should've helped for a lot more applications

Really wanna see if it is a mistake or is it really x4. Cause via. one of Linus old video, nGreedia GPU will not communicate on <x8 port.
... for no other reason, then FCUK YOU, customers.

 

[Vya Domus]

Also, the comparison to the old G4560 is somewhat odd. The G5400 should've been there

The G5400 is a bit higher clocked and has a bit more cache but more or less they both have pretty much the same performance. This 200GE is pretty weak but then again it's supposed to cost peanuts.

 

[Deeveo]

35W TDP, would like to see energy consumption. Could be a nice CPU for NAS.

 

[Imsochobo]

35W TDP, would like to see energy consumption. Could be a nice CPU for NAS.

I'm gonna use one for my router.
my router is a bit busy but I had planned an intel cause in that scenario they are superior but I do happen to have a spare am4 motherboard so I guess I'll go for athlon then.

 

[seronx]

Meanwhile, one can get a die of A9-9400e/A9-9420/A9-9420e/A9-9425 for less than 40 bucks!

22FDX ~20% lower cost than 14LPP/12LP.
12FDX over 30% lower cost than 14LPP/12LP.

Where is our ultra-cheap alternatives and successor to AM1 AMD?!

22FDX =
- DDR4 up to 3600 in a single channel and 64-bit LPDDR4(X) up to 4266. // Foundation IP.
- PCIe 4.0 // Foundation IP.
etc. Couple that with the small dies of Bobcat(90 mm squared) to Stoney Ridge(125 mm squared). It would have been better than this false Raven2 rip-off.

 

[_UV_]

Really wanna see if it is a mistake or is it really x4. Cause via. one of Linus old video, nGreedia GPU will not communicate on <x8 port.
... for no other reason, then FCUK YOU, customers.

That's either very old/strange AIB or very restrictive mobo, mining goes through x1 risers, never seen cards not working in this mode. Also, THG or Anand, don't remember precisly, did comparison tests years ago, the goal was how x1-4-8-16 of PCI-E 2.0/3.0 affects cards performance.

 

[hat]

Really wanna see if it is a mistake or is it really x4. Cause via. one of Linus old video, nGreedia GPU will not communicate on <x8 port.
... for no other reason, then FCUK YOU, customers.

Eh? My board has two x16 ports, one at x16, one at x4. My second GTX1070 runs happily in the x4 slot (it's a miner).

 

[Valantar]

35W TDP, would like to see energy consumption. Could be a nice CPU for NAS.

My thought exactly. Low TDP, plenty of performance for this, sufficient I/O, support for ECC memory (given its placement in the 'pro' lineup), great price. The PCIe limitation is a bit of a bummer if you want a 10GbE NIC and extra SATA controllers, but at least the latter can run off PCIe 2.0 off the chipset or a spare 3.0x1 without really losing performance in a NAS use case.

Now for someone to launch an AM4 ITX board with 6 SATA ports, or at least DTX (or "mATX" which they seem to call anything slightly larger than ITX these days, regardless if it's smaller than actual mATX) board with two PCIe expansion slots and a low price.

 

[chimonow]

Lets not forget that this will be overclockable and that additional performance can be gained. Would be great for an ultra low budget PC with upgrade-ability in mind.

 

[Vya Domus]

Dual cores shouldn't be a thing these days, maybe inside of a cheap laptop.

 

[Supercrit]

Dual cores shouldn't be a thing these days, maybe inside of a cheap laptop.

Still waiting AMD to make a 5W Core M alternative for powerful tablets with decent iGPU.

 

[chimonow]

Dual cores shouldn't be a thing these days, maybe inside of a cheap laptop.

Well until we have competent quad cores in the $50 space, we'll have to make do.

Still waiting AMD to make a 5W Core M alternative for powerful tablets with decent iGPU.

I don't see that happening. It would be a very small niche market to invest billions in R&D into, that doesn't really make sense. The tablet fad has pretty much died and there's not much wiggle room for profits.

 

[silentbogo]

Now for someone to launch an AM4 ITX board with 6 SATA ports, or at least DTX (or "mATX" which they seem to call anything slightly larger than ITX these days, regardless if it's smaller than actual mATX) board with two PCIe expansion slots and a low price.

Glorious times of cheap and awesome embedded/low power boards are over. I still have a bad-ass Zotac M880G-ITX with 6xSATA ports, which was my primary NAS platform for many-many years (until the external clocker decided to die).

I'm gonna use one for my router.
my router is a bit busy but I had planned an intel cause in that scenario they are superior but I do happen to have a spare am4 motherboard so I guess I'll go for athlon then.

Better sell that AM4 board and get something passively-cooled from Intel. 35W is wa-a-y too much for a router. I think even an old quad-core Celeron J1900 would be enough for the most part (unless you have something like 100 devices in your network).
I have a cheap-ass AsRock J3455B-ITX running gateway/firewall/VPN for a small organization with around 20 connected devices and it works flawlessly. Another one of those does some basic tunneling to several of our servers in remote data centers, runs private mail server, FTP, SMB, collects backups from local PCs and large data backups from 2 remote servers.
Just regular consumer boards, which cost about the same as that new Athlon.
What's cool, is that you can get a regular J3455-ITX board (no COM/LPT as on B-version, but it does have a mini-PCIe slot), and install one of those chinese miniPCIe to dual-LAN extension cards(realtek-based), and use the remaining PCIe x1 for an additional SATA controller, if you want more storage options.

Dual cores shouldn't be a thing these days, maybe inside of a cheap laptop.

Not even there...

Still waiting AMD to make a 5W Core M alternative for powerful tablets with decent iGPU.

AMD is really bad at that. 2 years ago they even said that "AMD has no plans to get involved in Embedded and Mobile segment", and hasn't released any sub 10W parts in consumer segment since Carrizo-L, and even then they were simply rehashing the same old Bobcat/Jaguar-based crap, they've been playing with since 2011. They've supposedly released some low-power embedded SoCs for enterprise and industrial applications, but I've never-ever seen those in the wild.

 

[GoldenX]

The G5400 is a bit higher clocked and has a bit more cache but more or less they both have pretty much the same performance. This 200GE is pretty weak but then again it's supposed to cost peanuts.

Plus the platform is more expensive for almost no gain.

 

[Valantar]

Glorious times of cheap and awesome embedded/low power boards are over. I still have a bad-ass Zotac M880G-ITX with 6xSATA ports, which was my primary NAS platform for many-many years (until the external clocker decided to die).

My initial plan is to "spin off" the HTPC part of my current combo HTPC+NAS and reuse its A8-7600+FM2A88X-ITX+ combo for a FreeNAS (or similar) standalone NAS. It's got 6 SATA ports, plus an mSATA and an eSATA, so really eight if I want to stretch it. That's sufficient, and I want to add 10GbE to it in the not-too-far future, so I can't add any controllers to it. It still should have a few years of life left in it, though.

AMD is really bad at that. 2 years ago they even said that "AMD has no plans to get involved in Embedded and Mobile segment", and hasn't released any sub 10W parts in consumer segment since Carrizo-L, and even then they were simply rehashing the same old Bobcat/Jaguar-based crap, they've been playing with since 2011. They've supposedly released some low-power embedded SoCs for enterprise and industrial applications, but I've never-ever seen those in the wild.

Actually an AMD rep stated in a recent "future of the APU" type of thing that they see APUs scaling to noticeably lower power in the near future. Can't remember where I read it, but the implication was that upcoming APUs would compete with Intel in fanless <10W laptops and 2-in-1s, which definitely implies a Core M competitor. Shouldn't really be a problem given the efficiency of Zen, but they'll likely have to cut the iGPU and implement a more efficient memory standard than DDR4. LPDDR4 for PCs really can't arrive fast enough IMO.

 

[silentbogo]

My initial plan is to "spin off" the HTPC part of my current combo HTPC+NAS and reuse its A8-7600+FM2A88X-ITX+ combo for a FreeNAS (or similar) standalone NAS. It's got 6 SATA ports, plus an mSATA and an eSATA, so really eight if I want to stretch it. That's sufficient, and I want to add 10GbE to it in the not-too-far future, so I can't add any controllers to it. It still should have a few years of life left in it, though.

Got the exact same board. Mine is broken (bad socket, non-functional RAM slot), but I still love everything about it.
The only reason it did not replace my old Zotac with A88X mobo, is because of active cooling. Old board has an enormous, even for 15-25W SoC, heatsink. I mean, the whole board is covered with aluminium fins and weighs almost a kilo. All it needs is the cheapest 60W PicoPSU and some vents on the side panel of my ITX box, so the hot air can escape on its own.
And the only reason I did not replace it with a faster 6W Intel SoC, is because those lack the I/O, which is very-very sad....
Maybe some time in the future I'm gonna hunt-down a used Xeon-D Supermicro board (really want an octa-core, so I can run a few VMs) and replace all of my toys with one mini-server...

 

[Paganstomp]

To think I built a Ubuntu rig around the AMD Athlon 5350 Kabini Quad-Core @ 2.05 GHz 25 Watts 4 years ago. Of course that platform also had its limitiations as well.