Processors

[balazsbiro]

I've ordered a BIOSTAR B350GTN mini-ITX board and planned to pair it with an Athlon 200GE to upgrade my existing A4-5000 based HTPC. I just found a line in the BIOSTAR manual that says the Athlon 200GE will not support HDMI.

Googling the issue, I found some problems with early BIOS versions of several 3xx boards with this CPU and DVI out, but all seem to be resolved since via BIOS updates. However I haven't found any board with an HDMI issue, nor any threads on this except a single 370 story from January where a guy could not get any video out on either DVI or HDMI - but the thread went dead.

Does anyone have any experience with the Athlon 200GE and 3xx BIOSTAR boards? Long story, but I cannot return the motherboard, so I am really hoping that even if there was an issue, it's since been solved via updates.

[benman2785]

i doubt that there will problems with Athlon 200GE and HDMI

get a b350 board and update to a supported BIOS
have in mind some Boards need the first run on DVI instead of HDMI to work properly

[balazsbiro]

Well... we'll see. Certainly seems like a weird issue to me. What I found on the internet says AMD changed something about the Athlon 2xxGE series' pin assignment compared to standard AM4 and this causes the issues.

Since my original post I've received an answer from Biostar saying that there are two "flavors" of the CPU on the market - "flavor 1" will work after a BIOS update, but "flavor 2" won't. They also claim these two variants have the same OPN number so they are unable to tell which one works and which doesn't... So I've asked AMD's support for help.

The motherboard is already delivered to my friend's place but I only meet him in a month which is when I'll get the board. I'll buy the CPU at that time and am hoping AMD can help me with serial numbers to look for or avoid.

PS: just to make it sound less crazy with this motherboard, mini-ITX boards for AM4 are stupid expensive and I was lucky to find this one at a discount in a different country as an outgoing model, which is why I've ordered it. The discount practically pays for the CPU...

[hardcoregames_]

I was pondering the use of one of the 200GE but after discovering MSI motherboards can updates the BIOS with no CPU the need for that processor is eliminated.

Still AFAIK the 200GE should support whatever graphics ports are on the motherboard. So with a HDMI based board the Vega 3 graphics should be able to display 1920x1080 or even 2560x1440.

My old gen 1 MSI B350M Bazooka has HDMI and the 200GE is on the CPU list.

The Biostar board has HDMI so the 2200GE should work fine.