We’ve got AMD’s 4700S Desktop Kit, a motherboard that almost certainly contains a defective version of the chip typical of the Sony PlayStation 5, for testing. This kit is certainly not a typical AMD product: the eight-core 16-thread Zen 2 ‘AMD 4700S’ chip has a 3.6 GHz base and 4.0 GHz boost, but is loaded directly onto a mini-ITX motherboard loaded, along with 8 or 16 GB of graphics memory (no standard DRAM) and a cooler, while the chip’s custom integrated GPU with 36 RDNA2-based computing units (CUs) is disabled. That means the chip’s ability to compete with the best CPUs for gaming, and its position in our CPU Benchmark hierarchy, rests on its ability to push a discrete GPU to high levels of performance. Today, we’re going to test the chip in a full stream of tests, including gaming and applications.
How did such a strange product enter the market? At last count, Sony has sold over 10 million PS5 consoles, each with its own special ‘Oberon’ chip designed by AMD. These custom chips come with eight Zen 2 cores and a powerful custom RDNA graphics engine, but a untold number of chips suffer from defects during the manufacturing processes, meaning they don’t work correctly (if at all), usually resulting in a trip. to the trash. Sometimes the chips just don’t meet certain clock speed criteria. Regardless of the problem with these chips, they can’t be used in a console, but AMD seems to have found a way to sell the faulty silicon by making a motherboard with most of the key components you’ll need to power small systems from scratch. to provide power. to make.
|
Processor |
Bow. | Price | Cores/Wires | Base/Boost Freq. | TDP | GPU cores | GPU freq. (MHz) | L3 (MB) |
| AMD 4700S | Zen 2 | $400 with board and memory (estimated) | 8 / 16 | 3.6 / 4.0 | 75W | N/A | N/A | 8 |
| Ryzen 7 5700G | Zen 3 | $359 | 8 / 16 | 3.8 / 4.6 | 65W | RX Vega 8 | 2000 | 16 |
| Ryzen 5 5600G | Zen 3 | $259 | 6 / 12 | 3.9 / 4.4 | 65W | RX Vega 7 | 1900 | 16 |
| Ryzen 7 4750G | Zen 2 | ~$310 | 8 / 16 | 3.6 / 4.4 | 65W | RX Vega 8 | 2100 | 8 |
AMD is certainly not known for selling nearly complete systems, but it is necessary for the 4700S Desktop Kit because AMD has fused the custom 75W AMD 4700S chip and eight GDDR6 memory packs on the motherboard with BGA mounting.
GDDR6 may seem like an odd addition – we see this type of memory mostly used for GPUs – but the 4700S uses GDDR6 as main memory instead of the stock DRAM we’re used to. This type of memory offers higher bandwidth than standard DRAM, but comes at the cost of higher latency. While GPUs crave this higher bandwidth and are not as sensitive to latency, GDDR6 does affect the performance of latency-sensitive workloads running on CPUs, such as gaming. In addition, the chip only provides a single PCIe 2.0 x4 interface for the user to connect PCIe devices, which ultimately limits GPU performance. It also has extremely limited I/O connectivity with only two SATA ports for storage devices.
Almost all the details about AMD’s 4700S kit for desktop PCs had come in through product listings and leaks before AMD even listed the chip on its site, and the company launched the AMD 4700S without any normal communication with the press via briefings or press releases. AMD also didn’t release the specs for the chip, such as clock speeds, cache, and TDPs, until we requested them several months after the systems started shipping.
AMD has declined to comment on whether or not the AMD 4700S chip is made from defective PS5 silicon, but the identical chip packaging and completely unique system requirements (like GDDR6) make it clear. AMD has also conspicuously avoided using Ryzen branding.
AMD has not covered the usual level of support for the chip with independent software vendors (ISVs), so most monitoring programs cannot provide accurate monitoring information, including for some basic parameters such as clock speeds. AMD’s own Ryzen Master does not support the chip either. All this makes this system a black box in many ways.
| Processor | AMD 4700S 8-core processor “Zen 2” architecture |
| Memory | 8GB or 16GB GDDR6 |
| PCIe slots | One PCIe 2.0 x4 |
| FCH | FCH AMD A77E Fusion Controller Hub |
| LAN | Asix AX88179 Gigabit Ethernet Controller |
| audio codec | Realtek ALC897 |
| Internal connections | 2x SATA 6Gb/s connectors — 1x USB3.2 Gen1 5Gbps connector — 1x audio connector on the front panel |
| External I/O | 4x USB2.0 — 3x USB3.2 Gen2 — 1x LAN — 1x USB3.2 Gen1 3x audio jacks |
| Guarantee | Two years |
What To do we know? We know that AMD is positioning the Ryzen 4700S Desktop Kit as a “high-performance productivity” solution for mainstream, home offices, small businesses and enterprises. That means it’s suitable for tasks like productivity, multitasking and light 3D workloads. AMD sells the kit either to system integrators (SI), who then make complete systems with the unit (more than 80 designs are coming to market), or as a packaged item. Systems based on this kit were first available in China, but both systems and standalone kits have now filtered out to Europe. However, AMD has not said whether systems will be available in the US.
You will notice that AMD specifically not position the 4700S Desktop Kit for gaming systems. You’ll soon see why.
The overall benchmark TLDR:
We’ll discuss the various benchmarks behind these cumulative results in detail on the following pages, but these slides provide a brief summary of our test results. The first two slides show game performance, while the last two slides show performance in both single and multi-threaded applications.
Visit the following pages for targeted tests that help explain why we’re seeing such low performance in gaming and single-threaded tasks. We also have a more in-depth look at the benchmark results and testing methodology, as well as a final section with our overall analysis.
On the following pages, let’s first take a look at the system we bought from a Chinese store and then run through the benchmarks.