AMD 4700S desktop APU: Not good enough for Xbox Series X|S but suitable for a Mini-ITX gaming PC with 16 GB GDDR6 RAM

The AMD 4700S chip has been spotted again, appearing in a Mini-ITX system being sold in China. The somewhat mysterious processor was recently discovered in code, as shared by Twitter user InstLatX64 (via Tom’s Hardware). Specs for the AMD 4700S were also published, with the processor turning up on Geekbench: 8 cores, 16 threads, 3.6 GHz base clock, and 4.0 GHz boost clock. It was initially believed that the chip on show here was possibly from an Xbox dev kit, and AMD has even got a support page for the 4700S desktop kit, but it only features some recent drivers for downloading and contact details.

Now HXL (@9550pro) has shared some interesting gaming PC details that come from a Chinese retailer (Tmall). The promo material mentions the Zen 2 microarchitecture of the 8-core, 16-thread AMD 4700S and support for 16 GB GDDR6 memory, along with 3.6 GHz to 4.0 GHz clock rates. It has been reasoned that AMD 4700S processors were originally intended to be used as the custom chips found inside the Xbox Series X and S consoles but were not up to scratch with Microsoft’s high standards. The Chinese retailer has also utilized an image of a chip on a board that has been taken straight from Microsoft's marketing material for the Xbox Series X|S, thus further implying that the AMD 4700S is Xbox-related.

As the iGPU is not enabled in this particular APU, the AMD 4700S can reach a higher CPU clock rate than the Xbox Series X (4.0 GHz vs. up to 3.8 GHz). Without a functioning iGPU part in this particular AMD 4700S-based Mini-ITX system the presence of a dGPU is therefore required for it to be classed as a serious gaming computer. Unfortunately, this is provided by the Radeon RX 550 (2 GB VRAM model) that is based on the dated Polaris architecture. Interestingly, the seller offers up a benchmark comparison of the AMD 4700S system against a computer with an Intel Core i7-9750H CPU and GeForce RTX 2060 GPU. The possible ex-Xbox chip easily beats the Coffee Lake contender in Cinebench R15 and R20 (see images below), and it even holds up well in a further comparison against an Intel Core i7-9700 and AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G.

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