A recent insider rumour from Board Channels has said that AMD seems to be planning on resurrecting its old Zen+ CPU architecture in order to meet demands for lower-end systems in China. The insider claims that the production of this new old architecture is meant for the AMD Athlon 3000G Series.
The rumour also said that the estimated amount of orders that AMD put for this AMD 3000G are around up to 30,000 units and are highly likely to be sold as a hardware bundle with lower-end AM4 motherboards such as the B450 and A320 series as apparently this budget setup are still quite popular in China.
For global users, the Athlon 3000G series comes with two models; the 3200G and 3400G. Both AMD Ryzen 3 3200G and the AMD Ryzen 3 3400G were first released to the public back in 2019 under the codename “Picasso”.
Both APUs come with quad-core configuration albeit the 3200G doesn’t come with simultaneous multithreading capability. In its time, this AMD Athlon 3000G good for gaming for those who are in the market for a really budget spec as the Vega3 iGPU embedded in these CPUs were proven to be very capableー albeit with lower and realistic expectations.
A YouTube channel RandomGamingHD made a video showcasing the capability of the Vega 3 iGPU paired with the lowest modern Athlon, the 3000G back in 2019 as well as a follow-up video in 2021 to compare it with the i5-11400.
As shown in both videos, the base AMD Athlon 3000G with Vega 3 iGPU, is deemed to be a very capable setup for entry-level especially at its time. This most entry-level APU is capable of running a couple of modern game titles such as Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Overwatch, Counterstrike: Global Offensive, and to some extent, Red Dead Redemption 2.
Do notice that the testing above uses the AMD Athlon 3000G, the lowest, dual-core of the modern Athlon CPU where it can already compete with the far more modern, mid-range CPU which is the Intel Core i5-11400ー which means that an even better result could be achieved with both the 3200G and 3400G.
Therefore, it is no wonder that these “ancient” APUs are still in high demand in the entry-level Chinese market. Those who are looking for this setup are most likely to be playing competitive games such as the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive which the 3000G alone could achieve a considerably high average FPS of around 80FPS.
The base model AMD Athlon 3000G was first released with a starting price of just $50 or just around A$70 and comes with a cooler out of the box. However, due to it having a short lifespan of just around a year of production time (the APU seems to be discontinued in production from 2020), it creates a bit of scarcity. The price on eBay as of early May 2023 shows that the average price for the APU is floating around A$100 to even astonishingly A$200 which renders it to be a horrible option for today’s standard.
Bottom line
AMD has been rumoured to have placed an order to manufacturers for its already-obsolete Zen+ APUs, the AMD Athlon 3000G series.
The insider who posted this rumour in Board Channel assumes that this is because the Chinese market is still flourishing in demand for entry-level gaming setup which is no surprise as China has been the biggest market for online games for quite some time now.
The AMD Athlon 3000G with Radeon Vega graphics coupled with B450 or A320 motherboards can easily be seen as a very capable and bang-for-the-buck setup as it runs very well on modern online games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
