Gadgetory

the AMD Athlon 200 GE CPU enters our benchmarking charts today but we're reviewing this one with a twist for this benchmark we're testing the CPU entirely as a CPU ignoring its integrated graphics out of curiosity instead to see how the $55 part does when coupled with the discrete GPU to further this we overclocked this supposedly locked CPU to 3.9 gigahertz using multiplier overclocking something that shouldn't work and which is disabled on almost all of the motherboards for the a and the m4 family at least for a thon 200 GE series parts in this instance the 200 GE at 3.9 gigahertz posts significantly improved the numbers over stock making it a candidate to replace the retired price position once held by the Intel Pentium CPUs at least up until the 14 nanometers shortage before that this video is brought to you by the gigabyte am the RX 580 and RX 5 7 8 mid-range video cards gigabyte a or SRX 570 now starts at $150 us on some retailers offering an affordable gaming solution for high settings and 1080p these cards now come with your choice of games picked between Resident Evil 2 Devil May Cry 5 and the division 2 you can pick two of three learn more at the link in the description below this is a $55 part we know it has an AI GP in it it's got a Vega integrated graphics solution we've looked at the our 320 200 G the r5 2400 G in the past and they're interesting but they deserve kind of special standalone benchmarking that's a bit different from our standard CP benchmark suite what we're interested in is seen is the Athlon 200 GE a good replacement for where the g3 2 5 8 once at 4 with a G 45 60 once at because in tal now it's Pentium G Series like the G 5600 for example in the 5400 they're way too expensive they're like 100 plus dollars which is really where I three territory used to be and should be so to see Pentium class CPUs north of 70 $80 is pretty disappointing because there needs to be a good replayed that 32:58 used to be something like a 50 $60 part and you just can't get that anymore so that markets lacking that's where we're looking at the 200 GE today and we're also overclocking it that's where it gets a bit more interesting because we tested the 200 GE on every vendors motherboards we tested it on a sous and with the crosshair seven hero which is completely different price category that motherboard it has the multiplier unlocked and it's got voltage unlocked but in reality when you set the multiplier it'll set it'll apply once you get into Windows it just ignores it so you can set 3.9 but it doesn't do anything and that's what the newest BIOS updates then we tried gigabyte and with gigabyte we tried the be 350 by board I think to a be 350 something like that and gaming three board same problem there it's it's locked and the CP is supposed to be locked by Andy so they're following this back the gigabyte board just doesn't even show you the multiplier it's a bit different there and then finally as ROC same thing doesn't apply the multiplier even if you set it so then we found out that MSI we used the b3 for the tomahawk for this Zen one architecture part with the newest bios and we found out that MSI with Aggie subversion 1.0 0.0 0.6 does allow you to do multiplier overclocking on the 200 GB which is really exciting because you can push it a lot harder with multiplier overclocking it's just product segmentation at the end of day which is interesting because that was the whole pitch AMD made when they came out with Rison saying well look you can overclock any of our parts we're not artificially segmenting it like in town out realistically every company segments their parts artificially because you can't survive otherwise but that was the pitch and it didn't apply some reason to the 200g II because they want to introduce more of them later and then finally for differences between the our 320 1200 there are three 1200 and the Athlon 200 GE we compare a lot in these benchmarks and it's important to know why the performance gaps emerge that do because they're both technically for thread parts it's just that one of them is two cores four threads and one is 4 cores 4 threads now typically under for example Intel's architecture you might not see that big of a difference between 2 core 4 thread and 4 core 4 thread in some games but here we're seeing a big difference and that's because a lot of the die on the 200 GE is allocated to a GPU which we are not using in these tests and because it's allocating that much dye space which is limited to a GPU you end up with about half of the cache this is really important so you've got level 1 level 2 level 3 cache l1 cache it's the closest to the CPU cores and is the most important it's also the smallest because naturally as you kind of close in on a square you get smaller and smaller towards the center there's less space towards the center and so obviously it follows that there would be less space for l1 cache which sits near the center and that l1 cache it's SRAM its static Ram it's extremely fast it's also extremely small so on the 1200 you're going to put 384 kilobytes of l1 cache you know with 1 megabyte of l2 on the 200 GE but 2 megabytes of l2 on the 1200 any of with 4 megabytes of l3 on the 200 GE at 8 megabytes of l3 on the 1200 and then finally back to l1 384 kilobytes on the 1200 versus 192 over 200 GE that's a big difference aside from the core difference and aside from the the memory limitations the memory controller memory speed you can get on the 1200 versus the 200 GE F 1 2018 uses the codemasters ego engine and unlike a lot of other games we test pushes extremely high frame rates that rarely become GPU bound this is good for sea view benchmarking at 1080p high F 1 2018 positions the Athlon 200 GE at 107 FPS average when stock with 64 FPS for 1% lows overclocking the 200 GE to 3.9 gigahertz boosts it to 124 FPS average a climb of 16 percent in terms of frame times that's a move from 9.3 millisecond to average frame times to an 8 millisecond average frame time comparatively an AM the are 3 1200 for core 4 thread stock CPU ends up at 144 FPS average with an overclocked variant at 163 FPS average if you're willing to overclock the 200 GE it does start to inch towards the r3 1200 stock CPU but manages to do so at half the price for an ultra budget build this might be an okay choice the G 5600 is Intel's closest competition and its price is simply too high to be worth considering at 100-plus dollars these Pentium should be closer to 70 to 80 dollars like they were in the past were they to actually make some sense especially for the price to performance ratios were looking at here's the frame time plot for f1 2018 for frame x remember that lower is better but more consistent is better than lower for every spike you see in the frame to frame interval that's a longer period of time between the previous frame and the current frame and the interval between frames becomes noticeable to the user particularly close to those 40 millisecond spikes which are perceived as stuttering the 200 GE overclocked to 3.9 gigahertz doesn't well overall with a consistently lower frame times then the stock version and the lengthened line also illustrates it moreover all frames rendered if we plot the overclocked 1200 you'll see the consistency of the redline is overall improved versus the 200 GE showing the best experience of the three plotted devices although it's also about two times the price that makes sense but this gives you a picture of what the individual frames look like in the game each one of those lines is a frame and what you want is them to be as consistent and flat as possible while still being low on the on the scale you want to be closer to for example sixteen point six seven milliseconds would be 60 FPS at 1440p the stack is similar we lose some frame rate off the top but overall performance is nearly identical that's because we're not changing anything in the environment that stresses the CPU and instead focusing on imposing a GPU limitation at the top end of performance but that requires the CPU is able to keep up which these low-end ones can't these results are functionally the same as at 1080p as a scaling versus the r3 and Pentium CPUs Assassin's Creed origins gives us look at a popular series that likes frequency but also leverages core count more heavily than most other games on the market this is made evident by positioning of the 79 80 XC and seventy-nine 60 ex CPUs which often have a frequency deficit but a core advantage at 1080p medium the Athlon 200 GE also illustrates this core and cash demand at low-end wear bottlenecks down to 41 FPS average when overclocks to 3.9 gigahertz a 9% lead over the stock 38 FPS average of the 200 GE the gt600 is able to lead at 52 FPS average with its increased frequency but still struggles when compared to other CPUs on the market the r3 1200 stock CPU ends up at 53 FPS average and increased over the 200 GES 38 FPS average of about 8 milliseconds average frame-to-frame interval that's noticeable here and overclocking the r3 1200 further assists and playability bringing the average frame rate up to 59 FPS average for a total frame to frame interval average of sixteen point six seven or so milliseconds none of the lows or frame time consistency plots suffered disproportionately from the averages in this lineup is just that the averages are low overall for the 200 GE decreasing geometric complexity would assist here as with draw distances but there's only so low that you can go in the settings before there's just nothing left that you can tune down 1440p doesn't change anything for assassin's creed of course except for the chart-topping CPUs like the 9900 K + 79 T DX e at the low-end performance and scaling are identical as at 1080p we are heavily CPU bound by these low-end products and playability of assassin's creed does suffer with the $55 AMD Athlon 200g II CPU even when overclocked it could be done on the lowest settings but doubling the budget to an overclocked to r3 1200 boost the average frame time from a dismal 27 milliseconds to an acceptable and fully playable 17.3 millisecond average frame to frame interval Far Cry 5 has had some odd frame time performance in some CPUs lately something we've Illustrated time and again with the 9600 K test variability data we presented in our 9600 K review we're just now starting to dig into far crys odd performance behavior as it reminds us of the GTA 5 bug we discovered a year or two ago where some CPUs would hit the engines framerate cap and then stutter hard as they bounced off of the frame rate cap in essence the GTA 5 bug meant that higher frame rates resulted in worse frame times and worse experience but only for the quad thread i5 CP use of the time we're digging into Far Cry 5 to see why it behaves in similar ways so for now we're only going to show the average in 1% lows until we have a better and fuller picture of what's going on at the low end of those frame times at 1080p normal the Athlon 200 GE stock cpu ends up at about 62 FPS average which is playable and has reasonably consistent frame times for a $55 part overclocking with the MSI board helps significantly boosting us to 71 FPS average the r3 1200 for perspective leverages its additional die space for cache and physical cores well running at 81 FPS average stock and 92 FPS average when overclocked to 3.9 gigahertz the G 5600 operates at 85 FPS average continuing to prove an overall poor value at its current variable price point of roughly $100 at 1440p the same sort of scaling appears we have some fluctuations in framerate but given that only the chart-toppers hit a GPU bottleneck there's not much movement at the low end of the chart civilization 6 offers a unique and entirely different look at CPU bound computational workloads for real gaming scenarios like turn-based strategy games and grand campaign games where AI players calculate thousands of possible actions for 6 the AMD Athlon 200 GE really suffers its average turn resolution time is twenty four point six seconds meaning that a game with 5 AI players will upon clicking your end turn button take 123 seconds two full minutes until you can play again for an extreme example the 790 DXE at 4.6 gigahertz would take 50 6.5 seconds or roughly half the time to process the same 5 turns with its eleven point three second per turn average overclock in the 200 GE fully demonstrates why we say Sims 6 still prefers frequency for its largely single and dual thread dependent crunching where our performance climbs to a twenty one second turn time average this is a turn time at requirement reduction of thirteen point four percent per turn which is absolutely noticeable moving to the r3 1200 stock CPU doesn't provide much value against the overclocks 200 GE but does provide a significant turn time reduction of 17 percent against the 200 GE stock overclocking the r3 1200 to 3.9 gigahertz propels it to an 18 second turn time for these two CPUs we're looking at Zen one architecture on both the 1200 and the 200 GE with differences that 9 gigahertz being a higher core count of 4 cores 4 threads rather than 2 and 4 on the 1200 alongside a massive difference in cash the r3 1200 has more die space allocated to the CPU components there's no IGP here and that allows for extra physical cores and the 384 kilobytes of level 1 cache alongside 2 Meg of level 2 cache and then 8 megabytes of level 3 cache level 1 is the most important as it's the SRAM closest to the cores or static Ram which is why the 200 GE is 192 kilobyte l1 cache is such a Punisher in these types of titles the 200 GE has half the cache across all three levels as compared to the 1200 not to mention a more limited memory controller blender is 100% unintended for the Athlon 200 GE processors clearly but we ran it through the workload anyway just for some fun we don't have the other low-end CPUs here to compare because we don't have 10 weeks to wait for them to finish rendering but we do have the 200 GE just for some perspective so the 200 GE has a mixed workload part that may occasionally be used for 3d rendering is as expected completely against our recommendation it took 145 minutes to finish our GM logo a single frame render although overclocking aided significantly against that time horizon to bring down render time to 119 minutes that's an 18% time reduction but the r5 2600 destroys the - energy ease performance at 39 minutes to do the same work it's more expensive but if you're doing this type of work regularly it really is worth trying to skip a few meals to afford a better CPU it'll be worth it so as for how this thing does it's a pretty good replacement for where the G 45 60 ng 32:58 once stood they were strong parts that if you didn't want an APU which is a perfectly valid thing to not want but you had a really strict budget of less than 150 bucks to spend on your CPU and your GPU those two CPUs made a lot of sense but they are no longer really 45 60 you can kind of get around that price it's just kind of old it's like 80 bucks still too expensive and for the most part it's not worth it the 5600 should have taken its place or the 5400 but at time of writing this content new egg in the u.s. have those prizes as a at about $100 plus or minus 20 depending on which part you're looking well not even - plus 20 sometimes so 100 minimum we saw him up to 120 it's just crazy the reason those prices have gone up is because there's a severe shortage of 14 nanometer parts Intel's not making a lot of them and there's demand for them so retailers have reopened to price them up but that means they're not really suitable another price points better off with like a 1200 and overclocking it for example or going the next step up and getting an r5 or an i-5 or something even so then to really fill the true budget class the - energy eads as well even if you're not going to use the IGP if you're just buying a dirt cheap CPU that's not garbage and coupling it with a non garbage cheap GPU like 1050 if you can find it a really cheap 1050 Ti or an rx 550 560 something like that it's a good CPU for those combinations we haven't worked with the IGP yet so can't speak to that side of things but I can tell you it's not going to be that powerful the are 320 200 G if you want something cheaper than a 55 dollar CPU and $100 GPU the 2200 G comes in 50 bucks cheaper than that it's a really good part we liked a lot it is limited of course but if you overclock the GP of the CPU it does pretty damn well on its own it's just a better CPU for APU for something like overwatch or csgo or something like that there's kind of eSports titles rocket League and if you're curious about that part check our your recap of the best CPUs of 2018 because we gave it the 22 Energy an award for the best budget gaming CPU and you can find information on that in that content so overall a pond 200 GE hopefully MSI doesn't pull that BIOS and if they do we'll make it available to you but hopefully I am that you can officially adopt this overclock in support of the 200 GE cuz it is supposed to be locked but it's just so much better when you overclock it to 3.9 gigahertz and it's trivial takes like zero effort and the power draw isn't even really worth talking about we do have numbers for it but it's just it's insubstantial really so that's it for this one you can find links in the description below as always the written article will be their product links will be there for some of the relevant products from this if you don't pick one of those up and go to store document access net to pick my shirt like this one or one of our mod mats and you can go to patreon.com/scishow Nexus to helps out as well subscribe for more I'll see you all next time