AMD's Unlocked Athlon 3000G APU Starts Shipping at $49

AMD announced today that it's started shipping its latest APU, the Athlon 3000G today for $49. The chip is the first Zen architecture-based product from AMD's Athlon line to to be unlocked.

AMD Athlon 3000G vs Athlon 200GE Specs

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Row 0 - Cell 0	AMD Athlon 3000G	Athlon 200GE
Cores / Threads	2 / 4	2 / 4
Base / Boost	3.5 / 3.5 GHz	3.2 / 3.2 GHz
L1 Cache	1MB	1MB
L3 Cache (MB)	4MB	4MB
GPU	Radeon Vega 3	Radeon Vega 3
GPU Cores	3	3
GPU Clock	1,100 MHz	1,000 MHz
TDP	35W	35W

Just like its predecessor, the Athlon 200GE based on the Zen 1.0 architecture, Athlon 3000G continues to use the same dual-core/quad-thread configuration and is integrated with Radeon Vega 3 graphics. It also features the same 1MB of L2 and 4MB of L3 cache. Even the power envelope has remained 35W. The chip is also compatible with AM4 motherboards.

However, there have been some improvements as well. The new chip is built on the improved Zen+ architecture. It's also manufactured with a 12nm process, which has led to an increase in base clock frequency from 3.2 GHz to 3.5 GHz for the CPU and an extra 100 MHz for the GPU.

The other major difference is that Athlon 3000G can also be unlocked, something budget gamers will definitely appreciate. Its predecessor was locked, but some AMD partners offered ways to overclock it. However, these were eventually disabled via BIOS updates.

AMD Athlon 3000G benchmarks — (Image credit: AMD)

AMD-provided benchmarks claims that the Athlon 3000G offers a significantly better 720p budget gaming experience compared to Intel’s popular (and more expensive) $73 Pentium G5400, scoring about a 55% boost in frames per second in the tested games.

AMD said that the Athlon 3000G will start showing up on Internet retailers in the coming days for the “suggested” price of $49. That means it could be either slightly cheaper or slightly more expensive, depending on the retailers. But you may want to be on the lookout for a Black Friday deal for this processor too.

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Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.

9 Comments Comment from the forums

tennis2

Cool! .....Where's the B550/A520 motherboards for them?
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InvalidError

tennis2 said:
Cool! .....Where's the B550/A520 motherboards for them?
Yup, this is messed up, releasing chips that aren't supported by any board currently in existence without the purchase of a more expensive older CPU to update the BIOS first or limiting yourself to more expensive boards with CPU-less BIOS update capability.
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King_V

Wouldn't support be included with any BIOS updates already out there that support the non-APU 3000 series? Or anything that mentions explicit support for the 3200g and 3400g?
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tennis2

King_V said:
Wouldn't support be included with any BIOS updates already out there that support the non-APU 3000 series? Or anything that mentions explicit support for the 3200g and 3400g?
I doubt that, but I suppose there's a chance since they're in the same product family. Only time will tell. This whole business of "supporting" multiple generations of CPUs on a given chipset is great from the standpoint of upgrade-ability. But when they only release each new generation with the top end X chipset for the first 3-6 months, they isolate a lot of potential buyers that don't have an earlier gen CPU to do the BIOS update with.

I like MSI's "Max" boards (ie, B450 Mortar Max) which are denoted as such to ensure out of the box compatibility with Ryzen 3xxx.

Aside from that, I'm disappointed that the non-CPU BIOS update functionality still hasn't fully permeated the market. If you're not going to release a full lineup of chipsets with day 1 support, at least do this.
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InvalidError

King_V said:
Wouldn't support be included with any BIOS updates already out there that support the non-APU 3000 series? Or anything that mentions explicit support for the 3200g and 3400g?
And what boards would those be? X570 (far too expensive to use with a $50 CPU) and a small patchwork subset of older boards that have been updated and marketed as such, requiring more research than most people only willing to spend $50 for a CPU are likely willing to do.
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King_V

InvalidError said:
And what boards would those be? X570 (far too expensive to use with a $50 CPU) and a small patchwork subset of older boards that have been updated and marketed as such, requiring more research than most people only willing to spend $50 for a CPU are likely willing to do.

Well, the only one I know about, because I own one and was looking at the BIOS updates, not actually looking for 3000 support, but this:

https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/#CPU

And it's a low-end board in an inexpensive barebones system ($150, board, case, external power brick, wifi card - just add CPU, RAM, and Storage). I would've guessed that a lot of other boards added 3000 support, including the APUs.

What I am NOT 100% sure about is if the Athlon APUs are somehow different enough than the regular APUs to require explicit, separate support for them. My assumption would be no, but I know where assumptions can take me...
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InvalidError

King_V said:
And it's a low-end board in an inexpensive barebones system ($150, board, case, external power brick, wifi card - just add CPU, RAM, and Storage). I would've guessed that a lot of other boards added 3000 support, including the APUs.
The point isn't about whether or not the board has been or will get updated for 3k-series support as nearly all motherboards already have been, it is about having 3k-series support OUT OF THE BOX so you don't have to jump through hoops (using an older CPU to update BIOS first which is a major inconvenience and substantial expense if you don't already own or have ready access to one) before you can use your $50 CPU. In the case of your barebone system, a new buyer is screwed if it ships with a BIOS version older than P3.50 as the vast majority of units stuck in warehouses around the world probably do, just like you are screwed with any other board that ships with a pre-3k BIOS and lacks CPU-less update.
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King_V

From what I understand, and again, this only applies to the specific product I mentioned, they (NewEgg) were selling out QUICKLY, and when Ryzen 3000 series came out, when the A300W DeskMinis came back in stock, they updated the product description to state support for the 3200g and 3400g. Additionally, I saw in the Q&A section that someone who'd purchased July 25th said theirs supported the 3400g out of the box.

I imagine this unit is a bit of an oddball, and something of an edge case.
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InvalidError

King_V said:
Additionally, I saw in the Q&A section that someone who'd purchased July 25th said theirs supported the 3400g out of the box.
Unless the model got a new SKU to reflect the update, there is no guarantee that people won't get random old units still lingering in the distribution channel unless the manufacturer recalled those to update them itself or the retailer is doing the updates itself.
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