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After reading some coverage of the the new desktop Ryzen APUs from AMD, they do seem to have good value especially the 2200G at $100. This would a be nice upgrade for my dad with his Haswell Pentium I built for him back in 2014 once Linux support is out.

And both them will be quite a step up for users of AMD older AM platforms. I'm also thinking that the R5 2400G will be a good fit for HTPCs and SFF gaming systems.

I can't wait to read the reviews next month after they are released.

whm1974 wrote:

especially the 2200G at $100. This would a be nice upgrade for my dad with his Haswell Pentium I built for him back in 2014 once Linux support is out.

If his primary use case is web surfing and other mostly light duty stuff, and the current system is stable, there's probably no need... if it ain't broke, and all that. If his boot drive is still spinning rust, an SSD would likely be a bigger performance boost than a CPU upgrade.

My wife got hit by Microsoft's Meltdown/Spectre patch glitch because she's still running an Athlon 64 X2. With an SSD boot drive it's still plenty fast enough for light duty tasks and casual gaming.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

especially the 2200G at $100. This would a be nice upgrade for my dad with his Haswell Pentium I built for him back in 2014 once Linux support is out.

If his primary use case is web surfing and other mostly light duty stuff, and the current system is stable, there's probably no need... if it ain't broke, and all that. If his boot drive is still spinning rust, an SSD would likely be a bigger performance boost than a CPU upgrade.

My wife got hit by Microsoft's Meltdown/Spectre patch glitch because she's still running an Athlon 64 X2. With an SSD boot drive it's still plenty fast enough for light duty tasks and casual gaming.

Well the last time I spoke with him, I was explaining what SSDs are and why he would want one. After he started complaining how slow his system was.

Sorry to hear that your wife got hit by that Meltdown/Spectre patch glitch, how much performance did she lose?

whm1974 wrote:

Sorry to hear that your wife got hit by that Meltdown/Spectre patch glitch, how much performance did she lose?

Not the performance issue. The BSOD on boot issue. MS's patch is apparently incompatible with anything K8-based. Hoses the system.

Really helpful info on the BSOD screen, too:


"Something Happened", more or less.

Oh crap, is there a fix for this? What are you and your wife doing about it now?

Booting in repair mode and rolling back to a restore point seemed to take care of it. And I believe MS has now blacklisted K8 for the patch until they get things sorted.

just brew it! wrote:

Booting in repair mode and rolling back to a restore point seemed to take care of it. And I believe MS has now blacklisted K8 for the patch until they get things sorted.

At least you had a have a restore point to roll back to.

The Ryzen 5 2400G is very likely going to be in my next HTPC build - very light gaming (indie games) and a bit of encoding occasionally.

whm1974 wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Booting in repair mode and rolling back to a restore point seemed to take care of it. And I believe MS has now blacklisted K8 for the patch until they get things sorted.

At least you had a have a restore point to roll back to.

I really need to see what CPUs her mobo is compatible with. Pretty sure I can find something K10-based in the stash that I could drop in there to at least get her onto something produced in the past decade. It's got DDR2 RAM in it so at least it's Socket AM2 (not 939).

just brew it! wrote:

I really need to see what CPUs her mobo is compatible with. Pretty sure I can find something K10-based in the stash that I could drop in there to at least get her onto something produced in the past decade. It's got DDR2 RAM in it so at least it's Socket AM2 (not 939).

I have a Phenom II X4 940 (AM2 based, not AM2+, so DDR2 mem controller only) laying around if you're in need.

Waco wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

I really need to see what CPUs her mobo is compatible with. Pretty sure I can find something K10-based in the stash that I could drop in there to at least get her onto something produced in the past decade. It's got DDR2 RAM in it so at least it's Socket AM2 (not 939).

I have a Phenom II X4 940 (AM2 based, not AM2+, so DDR2 mem controller only) laying around if you're in need.

Pretty sure I've got something, at the very least a Phenom 9550. Probably a Phenom II something-or-other as well. It'll all depend on what the motherboard supports. But thanks for the heads-up, I'll let you know if I am interested.

It is nice to AMD getting back on ball here, and hopefully they can keep it up.

Well the good news for Linux users is that the new Ryzen APUs will be supported by Kernel 4.15.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Sorry to hear that your wife got hit by that Meltdown/Spectre patch glitch, how much performance did she lose?

Not the performance issue. The BSOD on boot issue. MS's patch is apparently incompatible with anything K8-based. Hoses the system.

Really helpful info on the BSOD screen, too:


"Something Happened", more or less.

Yep, that happened to my mother in law running my old Athlon X2 5050e as her office PC, too. She was able to roll back to a restore point and repair her install, but I've gotta migrate her to a newer machine later this year...

Waco wrote:

The Ryzen 5 2400G is very likely going to be in my next HTPC build - very light gaming (indie games) and a bit of encoding occasionally.

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

whm1974 wrote:

Waco wrote:

The Ryzen 5 2400G is very likely going to be in my next HTPC build - very light gaming (indie games) and a bit of encoding occasionally.

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

A 2200G would be an amazing upgrade over the Athlon 5050e + Geforce GT 610 churning away in my mother in law's system. If memory prices go down later this year, I won't hesitate.

whm1974 wrote:

Well the good news for Linux users is that the new Ryzen APUs will be supported by Kernel 4.15.

What's the deal with AMD on linux these days? Open source or proprietary driver on vega?

whm1974 wrote:

Waco wrote:

The Ryzen 5 2400G is very likely going to be in my next HTPC build - very light gaming (indie games) and a bit of encoding occasionally.

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

I definitely want to put a R5 2400G in my Morex 557 case to replace my i3-3225. If RAM was reasonable I wouldn't even need to think about doing it.

Concupiscence wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Waco wrote:

The Ryzen 5 2400G is very likely going to be in my next HTPC build - very light gaming (indie games) and a bit of encoding occasionally.

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

A 2200G would be an amazing upgrade over the Athlon 5050e + Geforce GT 610 churning away in my mother in law's system. If memory prices go down later this year, I won't hesitate.

Well here is to memory prices coming down this year.

whm1974 wrote:

Waco wrote:

The Ryzen 5 2400G is very likely going to be in my next HTPC build - very light gaming (indie games) and a bit of encoding occasionally.

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

Not near-term. May do a Ryzen 5/7 build for myself later this year.

turtlepwr281 wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Well the good news for Linux users is that the new Ryzen APUs will be supported by Kernel 4.15.

What's the deal with AMD on linux these days? Open source or proprietary driver on vega?

From what I've read it looks like the open drivers are just fine for nearly everything, same as they were on my Radeon RX 480.

whm1974 wrote:

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

Count me in. Ever since I had received a new case from one of tech reports contests, I have been waiting for the opportunity to drop a Ryzen APU into it.

My only concern is carrying over some "old" DDR4 into this build. I seem to remember Ryzen cpus being rather picky with the ram you drop into them.

layerup wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

My only concern is carrying over some "old" DDR4 into this build. I seem to remember Ryzen cpus being rather picky with the ram you drop into them.

It depends on the speed and manufacturer. The 2x8 GeiL DDR4-2400 scavenged from the i5 6600K I previously had fired up at 2133 MHz on my Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3, and I manually nudged it to 2400 with zero issues. Check what you’ve got online for compatibility with Ryzen first. It probably won’t take much to make it work.

Concupiscence wrote:

layerup wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

So is anyone else planning on doing a Ryzen APU build?

My only concern is carrying over some "old" DDR4 into this build. I seem to remember Ryzen cpus being rather picky with the ram you drop into them.

It depends on the speed and manufacturer. The 2x8 GeiL DDR4-2400 scavenged from the i5 6600K I previously had fired up at 2133 MHz on my Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3, and I manually nudged it to 2400 with zero issues. Check what you’ve got online for compatibility with Ryzen first. It probably won’t take much to make it work.

I thought that this issue has been fixed with BIOS updates?

OK I spec together a build for under $500 and the 1200 is just a placeholder for the 2200G.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rGcGm8

whm1974 wrote:

OK I spec together a build for under $500 and the 1200 is just a placeholder for the 2200G.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rGcGm8

I know almost nothing about compatibility but I'm guessing these are going to be AM4 socket processors. With that being said, I think you would be well served by using Dual channel memory to get the best performance from integrated graphics. With the mobo you selected you're either going to fill both slots from the start or might I suggest this one for a few dollars more: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6813157768

Here's 8GB of dual channel ram to go with it (maybe a little slower than you specced) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6820232608

If you needed savings I would say you could potentially go smaller on the SSD or cheaper on the case or wait for a decent PSU on rebate (I've gotten a few EVGA and corsair units less than $20 recently). https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Ft7sbj

frumper15 wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

OK I spec together a build for under $500 and the 1200 is just a placeholder for the 2200G.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rGcGm8

I know almost nothing about compatibility but I'm guessing these are going to be AM4 socket processors. With that being said, I think you would be well served by using Dual channel memory to get the best performance from integrated graphics. With the mobo you selected you're either going to fill both slots from the start or might I suggest this one for a few dollars more: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6813157768

Here's 8GB of dual channel ram to go with it (maybe a little slower than you specced) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6820232608

If you needed savings I would say you could potentially go smaller on the SSD or cheaper on the case or wait for a decent PSU on rebate (I've gotten a few EVGA and corsair units less than $20 recently). https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Ft7sbj

Yeah, you definitely want to go with dual-channel RAM, especially if you're using the IGP.

@whm, would this build be for you or someone else? If it is intended to replace an existing PC, I'd seriously think about whether it actually represents a meaningful step up for the intended use case before committing to the build.

whm1974 wrote:

Concupiscence wrote:

layerup wrote:

My only concern is carrying over some "old" DDR4 into this build. I seem to remember Ryzen cpus being rather picky with the ram you drop into them.

It depends on the speed and manufacturer. The 2x8 GeiL DDR4-2400 scavenged from the i5 6600K I previously had fired up at 2133 MHz on my Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3, and I manually nudged it to 2400 with zero issues. Check what you’ve got online for compatibility with Ryzen first. It probably won’t take much to make it work.

I thought that this issue has been fixed with BIOS updates?

It probably has. I haven't updated in a few months because I haven't had any problems, but it looks like they pushed an update in December. I'll gird my loins and update the BIOS this weekend.

memory compatibility for me became much improved in July or August, but there has been a steady drip of updates since.

Waco wrote:

The Ryzen 5 2400G is very likely going to be in my next HTPC build - very light gaming (indie games) and a bit of encoding occasionally.

I assume these APUs will have VCE 4.0 like other Vega GPUs, compared to VCE 3.4 in Polaris. I think for casual type gaming these things will be great, and I kept an ISK 110 on my shelves specifically to run a Zen/Vega APU in it at one point. Encoding might be an interesting use but there isn't a lot of info about VCE 4.0 that I can find.

I've done some testing on HEVC encoding recently but I haven't gotten to testing VCE 3.4 on an RX 550 I have. So far have compared Pascal NVENC and Kaby lake QSV. I preferred the output quality of the Intel solution at same quality settings to NVIDIA, and file size was better as well (encoding speed was about 10 slower than Pascal, but still regularly going above 100fps). Hoping to do a few tests with VCE later this week and also try some software x265 encodes. There's various forum posts out there where you'll find comparisons so I'm basically just adding to the noise, but I'm expecting that overall (for both quality, compression ratio and encode time) it'd be Intel on top, but if encode time isn't a factor, it'll be software.

Question would be how close VCE 4.0 gets to Intel, IMO, as I don't see any of the hardware solutions really holding up to x265. But that's the tradeoff between encode time and encode quality I guess.

just brew it! wrote:

frumper15 wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

OK I spec together a build for under $500 and the 1200 is just a placeholder for the 2200G.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rGcGm8

I know almost nothing about compatibility but I'm guessing these are going to be AM4 socket processors. With that being said, I think you would be well served by using Dual channel memory to get the best performance from integrated graphics. With the mobo you selected you're either going to fill both slots from the start or might I suggest this one for a few dollars more: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6813157768

Here's 8GB of dual channel ram to go with it (maybe a little slower than you specced) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6820232608

If you needed savings I would say you could potentially go smaller on the SSD or cheaper on the case or wait for a decent PSU on rebate (I've gotten a few EVGA and corsair units less than $20 recently). https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Ft7sbj

Yeah, you definitely want to go with dual-channel RAM, especially if you're using the IGP.

@whm, would this build be for you or someone else? If it is intended to replace an existing PC, I'd seriously think about whether it actually represents a meaningful step up for the intended use case before committing to the build.

Well this would be for my dad or someone with similar use cases. A basic PC.