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

[GoldenX]

I think this mess originated from a guess of mine.
Prima.Vera asked if this CPU can decode h.265 10-bit HDR sources, and as it's obvious Vega has h.265 decoding, i guessed he was referring to CPU decoding. It kinda went from there.
So, sorry, mea culpa.

Where are the A300 and X300 chipset-less motherboards? We need them for these Athlons.

 

[silentbogo]

Where are the A300 and X300 chipset-less motherboards? We need them for these Athlons.

It's all very-very sad in the ITX field. I don't think we'll ever see A300 or X300 motherboards on the market, since AMD is now focused on 400-series, and OEMs are quite happy buying the remaining stock of A320 and B350 in bulk. The cheapest ITX board in my area is around $120, and the lowest listing @ newegg starts at $95. Our only hope is if Biostar or Elitegroup join the small-form-factor party for AM4, and release a sub-$60 A320 board (maybe next year, 'cause both are limping 1-2 years behind everyone else).

 

[HimymCZe]

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).

as a miner you don't need drivers and more then x1 slot. as a gamer, nVidia cards on x4 or lower will not be detected. source LinusTechTips

 

[hat]

The only reason I can think of that he would say that might be because SLI requires at least an 8x/8x configuration. There's no requirement that nVidia cards must be at at least 8x or greater to function, outside of SLI.

 

[Valantar]

The only reason I can think of that he would say that might be because SLI requires at least an 8x/8x configuration. There's no requirement that nVidia cards must be at at least 8x or greater to function, outside of SLI.

Yeah, I think this is the source of this confusion. There's no reason any GPU should refuse to work in any PCIe slot, really, unless the vendor has placed some sort of firmware or driver lock on certain use cases. One such is Nvidia limiting SLI to x8 connections or higher, but there shouldn't be any limit for individual cards. Should be possible to run one off an x1 slot if you want to.

It's all very-very sad in the ITX field. I don't think we'll ever see A300 or X300 motherboards on the market, since AMD is now focused on 400-series, and OEMs are quite happy buying the remaining stock of A320 and B350 in bulk. The cheapest ITX board in my area is around $120, and the lowest listing @ newegg starts at $95. Our only hope is if Biostar or Elitegroup join the small-form-factor party for AM4, and release a sub-$60 A320 board (maybe next year, 'cause both are limping 1-2 years behind everyone else).

I got the impression that A300 and X300 were never intended for end-user/retail boards, but rather industrial SFF and similar use cases. Given that all Ryzen chips include integrated basic I/O (some SATA, some USB) the use cases for these chipsets were always going to be limited - and it's not like they really add much. Also, fitting the regular X370/X470 chipsets on an ITX board is not actually a problem (though their heatsinks take up some room, the chips are tiny). Using X300 on a desktop board would also require sticking a bunch of extra USB controllers on (unless you want to deal with having only the 4 USB 3.0 ports off the CPU for the entire PC). That's not exactly ideal, and makes integrating a slightly larger chipset a better idea.

 

[silentbogo]

I got the impression that A300 and X300 were never intended for end-user/retail boards

Kinda both. They were supposed to be the miraculous space-savers for ITX and STX form factors, but OEMs are so used to cramming larger desktop chipsets onto smaller boards, that an already small AMD Promontory was a perfect candidate for SFFs. There simply was no demand.
Also, A320 and B350 were retailing for $15 new(bulk was probably much cheaper), so there was no need to save a dollar or two on less functionality and more pain in the ass from doing a separate design for a/x300. It's always more financially sound to stick with a bunch of pin-compatible parts and sell the same board to the different market segment, and at different prices.

 

[Mussels]

This would be really good for ITX builds, HTPC and office level stuff