Athlon 200GE - the ultimate great place-holder CPU?

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whm1974

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Jul 24, 2016
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What OEMs need is not what users need..

A Vega 6 - 2C/4T APU would had taken the entire esport market away from the 2200G and that was too much it seens.
I would have made it Vega 4 and wouldn't bother with the 220GE or 240GE at all. The best use case for the 200GE if for systems that need 35W TDP.
 

Abwx

Lifer
Apr 2, 2011
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What OEMs need is not what users need..

A Vega 6 - 2C/4T APU would had taken the entire esport market away from the 2200G and that was too much it seens.

And why would they shrink their already thin margins by cannibalizing their own products..?.

The competition are the Pentium and other Celeron, and in this respect those Athlon do a very good job, since that s some novelty they are still overpriced for the 220/240GE, although the 35W TDP will still allow some slight premium on the higher clocked ones.

https://geizhals.de/?cat=cpuamdam4&xf=1133_Athlon~12099_Desktop~820_AM4

https://geizhals.de/?cat=cpu1151&xf=1133_Pentium+Gold~12099_Desktop~820_1151+v2
 
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Insert_Nickname

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May 6, 2012
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The point was the Athlon 200GE needed more IGP power, not 300mhz more. This makes the 220 and 240GE just pointless.

I don't think the additional 3-400MHz is worth the premium myself, but it does bring frequencies more inline with Pentium/Celeron CPUs. What I'd really like to see would be a hypothetical 3.9GHz version with a 65W TDP. That'd make a (too...?) good competitor at the $70 mark for people who don't need IGP performance, but need to run basic applications that are still (mostly) single threaded in nature.

Adding 2-3CUs is unlikely to bolster performance enough to be a meaningful upgrade. The 2200G serves that purpose admirably, and has 4 real cores. As others have pointed out, a more performant Athlon IGP would cannibalise 2200G sales.

Ultimately I agree with whm1974, the Athlon is either for users on a very tight budget* or those (like me) who need a 35W TDP.

*Who'd otherwise be stuck on some Pentium/Celeron with HD510 or 610 IGP(!). Which is what Intel offers at this price level. Compared to those, the Athlon is a graphics power house. I don't even want to mention the small core SoC graphics... :eek:
 
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Insert_Nickname

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May 6, 2012
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They should rather make 200GE(E?) models with even lower tdp like 25 or even 15W. 65W for a dualcore is unacceptable in 2018.

To be fair, I don't think It'd ever use that much with 2 cores / 3CUs active. 45W would likely be plenty. 65W is just playing it safe, and if it helps some marginal dies meet criteria, so much the better (cheaper).

Its the classic budget dilemma. You can only pick two of the 3 options; cheap, fast or efficient.

I suspect if you manually limit frequency to 1600MHz in the OS, you'd have something in the 15W range. On my own Athlon I haven't seen more then 35-40W total system power doing basic desktop stuff. Idle is ~21W, so it's not like RR is a power hog.
 
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hojnikb

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Sep 18, 2014
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To be fair, I don't think It'd ever use that much with 2 cores / 3CUs active. 45W would likely be plenty. 65W is just playing it safe, and if it helps some marginal dies meet criteria, so much the better (cheaper).

Its the classic budget dilemma. You can only pick two of the 3 options; cheap, fast or efficient.

I suspect if you manually limit frequency to 1600MHz in the OS, you'd have something in the 15W range. On my own Athlon I haven't seen more then 35-40W total system power doing basic desktop stuff. Idle is ~21W, so it's not like RR is a power hog.
If that sku would have a beefier vega (like vega 6) and clocked to 3.7-3.8 then i guess it would make sense. Honestly, thats what 240GE should have been. 3.8G+VEGA6. At 70-75$ it would make tons more sense.
 

Abwx

Lifer
Apr 2, 2011
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I suspect if you manually limit frequency to 1600MHz in the OS, you'd have something in the 15W range.

CPU loading is at barely 15W@2.5GHz, at 1.6GHz it shouldnt exceed 7-8W, mainly due to the uncore power not scaling down as fast as the cores, if it did it would be at 4-5W..
 

Shivansps

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Sep 11, 2013
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Some days i have no idea if those numbers are real or just made up. How else we could explain that the 65W 7400 uses less power than the 35W 200GE? Rule #1 for me is never trust a TDP number.

200GE cooler is the same one used on older 65W APUs as well.
 

Shivansps

Diamond Member
Sep 11, 2013
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I don't think the additional 3-400MHz is worth the premium myself, but it does bring frequencies more inline with Pentium/Celeron CPUs. What I'd really like to see would be a hypothetical 3.9GHz version with a 65W TDP. That'd make a (too...?) good competitor at the $70 mark for people who don't need IGP performance, but need to run basic applications that are still (mostly) single threaded in nature.

Adding 2-3CUs is unlikely to bolster performance enough to be a meaningful upgrade. The 2200G serves that purpose admirably, and has 4 real cores. As others have pointed out, a more performant Athlon IGP would cannibalise 2200G sales.

Ultimately I agree with whm1974, the Athlon is either for users on a very tight budget* or those (like me) who need a 35W TDP.

*Who'd otherwise be stuck on some Pentium/Celeron with HD510 or 610 IGP(!). Which is what Intel offers at this price level. Compared to those, the Athlon is a graphics power house. I don't even want to mention the small core SoC graphics... :eek:

They are reeplacing APUs are have way FASTER igps than these things. I could accept the $55 200GE as a excellent A6-9500 reeplacement, even trought it performed slower in a few selected cases.

At 65-75 they are reemplacing the A8-9600 and the A10-9700 that had way more powerfull iGPUs, thats unacceptable, simple as that. The 240GE is slower than the A8-7600 FM2 apu, thats unacceptable.

yes a 6CU 240GE, and a 4CU 220GE would have taken some 2200G market yes, but thats the reason enoght to give the exact same excuse Intel used for 10 years?

Nevermind that those APU are factory locked in ways that even Intel did not dare to do. I like the 200GE but i hate everything else AMD did with these Athlons. AMD showed his worse face here.
 
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Insert_Nickname

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May 6, 2012
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CPU loading is at barely 15W@2.5GHz, at 1.6GHz it shouldnt exceed 7-8W, mainly due to the uncore power not scaling down as fast as the cores, if it did it would be at 4-5W..

You are right of course. I just included IGP power.

They are reeplacing APUs are have way FASTER igps than these things. I could accept the $55 200GE as a excellent A6-9500 reeplacement, even trought it performed slower in a few selected cases.

At 65-75 they are reemplacing the A8-9600 and the A10-9700 that had way more powerfull iGPUs, thats unacceptable, simple as that. The 240GE is slower than the A8-7600 FM2 apu, thats unacceptable.

yes a 6CU 240GE, and a 4CU 220GE would have taken some 2200G market yes, but thats the reason enoght to give the exact same excuse Intel used for 10 years?

Nevermind that those APU are factory locked in ways that even Intel did not dare to do. I like the 200GE but i hate everything else AMD did with these Athlons. AMD showed his worse face here.

I don't quite know how to respond to that. I can see it from both sides.

Ultimately AMD is a business. They're here to make money. If they can up sell to the 2200G, that's what they'll go for.

I too would like differential in IGP performance besides CPU performance. In the ideal world you'd have two models. One focused on IGP performance, the other on CPU performance. But we're never going to get that. It's just business.
 
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hojnikb

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Sep 18, 2014
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Too bad no one makes even cheaper A300 boards with limited TDP. Like AM1 was, where you could get a mobo for like 20-25$.
 
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Shivansps

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You are right of course. I just included IGP power.



I don't quite know how to respond to that. I can see it from both sides.

Ultimately AMD is a business. They're here to make money. If they can up sell to the 2200G, that's what they'll go for.

I too would like differential in IGP performance besides CPU performance. In the ideal world you'd have two models. One focused on IGP performance, the other on CPU performance. But we're never going to get that. It's just business.

I dont know what to say either, considering what AMD has done with the rest of the lineup i really was not expecting such weak skus to reemplace the 9600 and 9700. This is definately a step back, if Intel would have done this you can be sure all hell would have broken loose, and on this case no one seen to even care.

im suspecting the 1.0.0.6 OC "bug" was done intencionally by AMD to keep the public opinion distracted, they will sell those useless SKU to OEMs instead of 9600 and 9700s anyway.
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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AMD has already demonstrated that they are not all that interested in serving the low-end market. It's like they don't really care. They had a lot of options to sell cheap Raven Ridge-based chips into the space currently/formerly occupied by Bristol Ridge. I still see some use case for the 200GE for those that know what they're getting, but let's face it, they easily could have slotted something better into that price point if they had really wanted to do so. And once Zen2 hits the market . . . ugh.

All their best deals and best buys are going towards the midrange and higher. It isn't like the old days when AMD's entire CPU lineup (outside of Piledriver) could be bought for $180 or less.
 

Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
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I dont know what to say either, considering what AMD has done with the rest of the lineup i really was not expecting such weak skus to reemplace the 9600 and 9700. This is definately a step back, if Intel would have done this you can be sure all hell would have broken loose, and on this case no one seen to even care.

AMD has already demonstrated that they are not all that interested in serving the low-end market. It's like they don't really care. They had a lot of options to sell cheap Raven Ridge-based chips into the space currently/formerly occupied by Bristol Ridge. I still see some use case for the 200GE for those that know what they're getting, but let's face it, they easily could have slotted something better into that price point if they had really wanted to do so. And once Zen2 hits the market . . . ugh.

Undoubtedly. That's at least part of the problem. I'm certainly not about to defend either company's business decisions.

As for cheap RR, if AMD intended to compete in the really low-end, they would have made a separate 2C/4-6CU die for it. They can't be happy selling full RR dies* that cheap, and there can't be that many defective dies to go round. I'm guessing Athlons are made with whatever would normally have ended in the bin.

*That are as large as SR-PR ones, which have far higher prices.
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Not to interrupt the current discussion, but I'd like to bump the ASRock AM4 STX / DeskMini discussion again, any new info? It's been a month or a month and a half since pics surfaced. Hopefully in Jan., isn't CES in Jan.?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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Yes, CES is in January. Should be on the 8th or 9th?

Also it will be interesting to see what offerings AMD has for 2019 and compare those to what we see now (particularly in juxtaposition to the 200/220/240GE). It looks like they have a slew of 3CU offerings at the low end again under the Picasso nameplate on 12nm, at least according to the WCCFTech leaks.
 
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amd6502

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Apr 21, 2017
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Is it confirmed that all of these are Zen 1.0, or is there some decent chance that one of them (220?) might be Zen+?
 

Shivansps

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Sep 11, 2013
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They are all Zen+, i know this because gigabyte motherboards enables the VME on all Ryzens, and in Zen 1 is broken, what causes a boot loop on my PXE boot system because windows pxe bootmgr is 16bit v86. Dosent happen on Ryzen 2000 or any of the APUs.