AMD confirms Ryzen 8000G APUs don't support ECC RAM, despite initial claims

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By Anton Shilov
published

Maybe wait for Ryzen 8000G Pro versions.

AMD
(Image credit: AMD)

When AMD formally introduced its Ryzen 8000G-series accelerated processing units for desktops in early January, the company mentioned that they supported ECC memory capability. Since then, the company has quietly removed mention of the technology from its website, as noted by Reddit users. 

We asked AMD to clarify the situation and were told that the company has indeed removed mentions of ECC technology from the specifications of its Ryzen 3 8300G, Ryzen 5 8500G, Ryzen 5 8600G, and Ryzen 5 8700G. The technology also cannot be enabled on motherboards, so it looks like these processors indeed do not support ECC technology at all.

While it would be nice to have ECC support on AMD's latest consumer Ryzen 8000G APUs, this is a technology typically reserved for AMD's Ryzen Pro processors. So it would be an odd move for the company to add it to regular products. That said, expect AMD's yet-to-be-announced Ryzen Pro 8000G APUs to support ECC, along with other Pro-grade capabilities, such as DASH remote management, AMD Memory Guard DRAM encryption technology, and other AMD Pro advantages.

AMD's Ryzen 8000G-series lineup includes four models compatible with AM5 platforms. The inexpensive Ryzen 3 8300G and Ryzen 5 8500G use the company's Phoenix 2 silicon, featuring up to 6 cores (two high-performance Zen 4 and four high-density Zen 4c cores) and equipped with the Radeon 740M graphics processing unit. The more expensive Ryzen 5 8600G and Ryzen 7 8700G employ the more advanced Phoenix silicon, which includes up to eight high-performance Zen 4 cores and come with the superior Radeon 780M GPU. Phoenix-based APUs are designed to deliver greater performance in both general computing and graphical tasks. In addition, the Phoenix platform incorporates a Ryzen AI accelerator to enhance machine learning capabilities. 

While ECC support is not coming to regular AMD Ryzen 8000G-series processors (as it requires validation and appropriate testing), it will certainly be supported by AMD's Ryzen Pro 8000G-series accelerated processing units, whenever they arrive. For now, it'sd unclear when that will happen, but it is reasonable to expect them to arrive in the coming months. 

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Freelance News Writer

Anton Shilov is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

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28 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Amdlova
    For now, it'sd unclear when that will happen, but it is reasonable to expect them to arrive in the coming months.


    IT'S D Tenacious D.

    That notebook CPU only support it self. It's a "meh" product
    Reply
  • stanos4
    haha, there are many non-pro apus that claim ECC support. Let alone that all non-pro non apus for both am4 and am5 support ecc.
    to give an example of some non-pro apus with ecc:
    zen4 7540U: https://www.amd.com/en/product/13211zen3+ 7735HS: https://www.amd.com/en/product/12941zen3+ 6800U: https://www.amd.com/en/product/11591zen3 5825U: https://www.amd.com/en/product/11601there are even manufacturer(s) claiming ecc working on apu (7840hs) where amd claims ecc is not working - bedrock 7000: https://www.solid-run.com/industrial-computers/bedrock-r7000/#specificationsor possibly the Changwang board you published few days ago.... https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-mobile-cpus-power-new-mini-itx-motherboards
    and yes, I'm super pissed off on AMD for this. This is completely unnecessary arbitrary choice of functionality removal. I'm even quite confident they go only against themselves, as these apus are in no position to compete against anything else they have / there already are products that compete either way. Could have been a lovely low power (<~10W idle) small home server. The best now can hope for, is to again wait further if some manufacturer releases sbc with ecc support on a modern apu (no, v2000 or v3000 are not modern) to masses.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    That is terrible news. And it seems a paradigm shift towards the exact type of market segmentation that AMD decried when Zen was launched.

    I understand that technically the validation effort and even the process effort potentially required to add all of these functionalities (certificate management) to a chips is not trivial. But whereas the certificate management may reallyb e a per-device installation effort, the ECC validation generally is a per product effort that will need to get done anyway and perhaps a minimal amount of per device testing effort during manufacturing.

    Drawing the line there shows that AMD is pinching pennies.

    Now it wouldn't be all too bad, if the 'pro' variants could actually be obtained as easily as the non-pro chips: I don't mind paying €5-10 extra for the feature.

    But from past experience the pro chips are very difficult to get making ECC support a significant barrier, while the need for real ECC goes up with process density and RAM capacity.

    Actually the only good news in the ECC arena has been that prices and availability of modules had improved to a point where that wasn't the real barrier... which now has just shifted again to the SoCs.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    AMD's approach to Zen ECC support on desktop has been atrocious from the start. Every chip supports it, but no motherboards are required to have it so in effect it's barely better than Intel's approach. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if these did actually support ECC memory, but no board that supports it will support them.
    Reply
  • wbfox
    abufrejoval said:
    That is terrible news. And it seems a paradigm shift towards the exact type of market segmentation that AMD decried when Zen was launched.

    I understand that technically the validation effort and even the process effort potentially required to add all of these functionalities (certificate management) to a chips is not trivial. But whereas the certificate management may reallyb e a per-device installation effort, the ECC validation generally is a per product effort that will need to get done anyway and perhaps a minimal amount of per device testing effort during manufacturing.

    Drawing the line there shows that AMD is pinching pennies.

    Now it wouldn't be all too bad, if the 'pro' variants could actually be obtained as easily as the non-pro chips: I don't mind paying €5-10 extra for the feature.

    But from past experience the pro chips are very difficult to get making ECC support a significant barrier, while the need for real ECC goes up with process density and RAM capacity.

    Actually the only good news in the ECC arena has been that prices and availability of modules had improved to a point where that wasn't the real barrier... which now has just shifted again to the SoCs.
    The non-pro "G" APUs have never supported ECC........
    Reply
  • wbfox
    thestryker said:
    AMD's approach to Zen ECC support on desktop has been atrocious from the start. Every chip supports it, but no motherboards are required to have it so in effect it's barely better than Intel's approach. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if these did actually support ECC memory, but no board that supports it will support them.
    Wow, you're special. AsrockRack, TYAN and ASUS have put out rock solid boards that use ECC. Just because you don't know about something, doesn't mean they don't exist. Shocker, many of them have, gasp, 10 gig networking and IPMI!
    Reply
  • thestryker
    wbfox said:
    Wow, you're special. AsrockRack, TYAN and ASUS have put out rock solid boards that use ECC. Just because you don't know about something, doesn't mean they don't exist. Shocker, many of them have, gasp, 10 gig networking and IPMI!
    Congrats you win the idiot prize where did I say you couldn't get them? Oh yeah I didn't as I compared them to Intel who requires a specific chipset to get ECC support for desktop class and said their implementation is barely better than Intel's. If you can't actually read and understand what is being said maybe you should just find something else to do with your time.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    expect AMD's yet-to-be-announced Ryzen Pro 8000G APUs to support ECC
    I wouldn't have a problem with having to pay extra for a Ryzen Pro, as I have previously bought Xeon CPUs for this reason. ...except, they don't sell them retail-boxed!!!
    If AMD is going to hold back features like this, they really should put at least a couple SKUs in the retail channel that have them. And yes, I'm aware you can find them used, but I should be able to buy one with a full warranty - just like their other desktop CPU models!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    abufrejoval said:
    That is terrible news. And it seems a paradigm shift towards the exact type of market segmentation that AMD decried when Zen was launched.
    Nah, it's absolutely not news. AMD has played this game with their APUs since the very first Ryzen 2000G models, IIRC.

    abufrejoval said:
    Drawing the line there shows that AMD is pinching pennies.
    No, I think it's a different game. You have to consider that you & I can't buy Ryzen Pro on the open market. They only sell them to OEMs. I think it's an enticement they have reserved for big OEMs. I'm not really sure why, but maybe AMD won't even sell their Pro SKUs to small whitebox builders, giving big OEMs an exclusive lock on the corporate market?

    abufrejoval said:
    Actually the only good news in the ECC arena has been that prices and availability of modules had improved to a point where that wasn't the real barrier... which now has just shifted again to the SoCs.
    It got worse with DDR5, for a couple of reasons. The ECC UDIMM market is smaller for DDR5 because all of the proper workstation CPUs now require RDIMMs, so that's problem #1, limiting selection and manufacturer incentive to have competitive offerings. The second problem is that DDR5 ECC UDIMMs now require 25% more DRAM chips than non-ECC, whereas DDR4 DIMMs only required 12.5% more. That will impact the price, for sure.

    Finally, people read that DDR5 has on-die ECC and some of them probably think that means you no longer benefit from having ECC at the DIMM-level, or perhaps they think the distinction is completely gone? I expect this market confusion undermines demand ever further, which doesn't help at all with the pricing, availability, and specs of said DIMMs.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    thestryker said:
    AMD's approach to Zen ECC support on desktop has been atrocious from the start. Every chip supports it,
    Nope. Their non-Pro APUs really don't (i.e. it's truly disabled). Look at the ASRock Rack AM4 server boards' documentation and they'll tell you this. They support ECC on all AM4 CPUs except the non-pro APUs.
    Reply