Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed okay so a little while ago now I reviewed the AMD Athlon 200 GE actually it was about six weeks ago now and I remember rushing to cover it because we had our TX 20 70 samples incoming and that content was due at the following day anyway I promised that I would revisit discrete GPU testing with the 200 G but of course that got delayed by about 20 different content pieces centered around numerous product and game releases so once I wrapped up the thread rep attesting I took a quick look at the calendar and realized that there were going to be very few opportunities to revisit the Athlon apu unless i acted fast so i dug out the plucky little zen base chip and for comparison grab the horizon 322 energy and intel's pentium g 5400 now let me start by attempting their head off a few concerns about this test i haven't included the core i3 8100 and there are a few reasons for this firstly at the current 130 dollar us asking price it doesn't really make that much sense otherwise in 320 200 g which was already my preferred choice of these two processors well that comes in a 100 dollars us so it is quite a bit cheaper and that being the case I didn't want to waste another day testing a CPU that we previously haven't recommended at a lower price point today's video has been sponsored by as rock and then you phantom gaming range of Zed 390 motherboards the Zed 390 phantom gaming 6 and 9 include a blazing fast 2.5 gigabits per second network interface offering gamers and content creators two-and-a-half times the bandwidth compared to standard Gigabit Ethernet for more information please check the link in the video description intel's current budget lineup just isn't doing it for me and this was the case even before the 14 nanometer shortage in the past i have preferred intel budget offerings to those from AMD i love to the pentium g 45 6 you really couldn't talk enough about that thing i think i made about a dozen videos within a month a few years earlier i was raving about the value of the core i5 6600 k compared to the FX garbage AMD was pedaling at the time the quad core scale like part was a bit of alright but in two in 18 things have changed boy oh boy have they changed and for the better 64 toll the dual cause like the G 4560 won't ever get game is out of bed anymore not when a processor like the six core 12 thread risin 5 2,600 can be had for just a hundred and sixty dollars u.s. and even if you don't have that kind of money the quad-core risin 320 Turner G is also a bit special at $100 and certainly the go-to option for budget builders in fact thanks to its exceptional value would often ranks in the top 5 best seller list on Amazon then for even less we have the Athlon 200 GA it's 40% cheaper at just $60 but I have to say it doesn't quite give us the fizz like the pure quad-core 2200 G does the 200 GE is a dual core with SMT it's locked and it comes with a piddly little cooler but again it also cost just $60 almost half that of Intel's cheapest pentium branded coffee-like cpu the pentium g 5400 which currently sells for a hundred and ten dollars for a direct cost comparison i would need to get my hands on a seller on g 4920 a 3.2 gigahertz dual-core with just 2 megabytes of l3 cache and that power will almost certainly gets laid by the Athlon 200 GE so what I want to know is if you're on a super tight budget should you buy the Athlon 200 GE it's really the only sub $100 us option right now and frankly while the pentium g 5400 is included for comparison's sake at the current asking price which sees it costs more than the risin 320 200 G basically means well it's essentially a dead part at this point I suppose still we do have the 2200 G or the 200 GE and if you're a gamer using a discreet graphics card should you save every last dollar and go with the 200 GE and then upgrade to something better in the future something like the rise in 5 2600 for example or should you spend a little bit more now and land yourself the 2200 G it's only 40 dollars more but are you going to see that much of a performance increase well let's go find out the Athlon 200 G has been tested with dual channel ddr3 666 CL 16 memory the pentium g 5400 with dual channel ddr3 cell 16 and the horizon 320 200 G with ddr4 3200 sales 16 memory just quickly for those unaware the reason for the different memory speeds comes down to what the CPUs officially support the 200 G can only run with ddr4 memory up to 20 666 while the Pentium processor is limited to 2400 memory unlocked motherboards such as the H 370 for example the horizon 322 energy doesn't have any kind of memory limitation at least not one that's imposed by the motherboard or anything else like that it's pretty much whatever the memory controller itself can handle typically they work just fine with 3200 memory and we recommend using at least 3000 spec memory with this APU the GPU used is the RT X xx atti and yes I know I know it's an unrealistic GPU and yadda-yadda-yadda but I want to be able to directly compare the data with the higher-end CPUs that I've already gathered and frankly it really makes no difference the margins seen at 1080p with these CPUs will be much the same with the gtx 1070 especially when comparing these cpus in modern titles as we're almost CPU bound and to show that i will provide some evidence and perhaps a bit of context of course the entire point of testing and pairing these CPUs is to test CPU performance not low-end GPU performance so if you understand this and we're happy with that then let's continue if not well not really sure what you do with that anyway on to the benchmarks first up we have Assassin's Creed Odyssey and being at the CPU demanding title that it is we find some extremely CPU bound results with these entry-level CPUs because of this the 1080p 1440p and for carriers are all identical so let's just discuss the 1080p numbers the pentium g 5400 was clearly much faster than the Athlon 200 G is it allowed for 18% more performance and at these sub 60fps frame rates that's a very big and very noticeable difference however the 22 energy was 20% faster again allowing for an average of 48 fps and that's again a very big very noticeable performance improvement the 2200 G was also 41% fast and the 200 G so in my opinion in certain well worth spending the extra forty dollars to get the real quad-core CPU now if we look at the kind of performance that a gtx 1070 is capable of we see that at mep you'd still very much be heavily cpu limited in this title with any one of the three cpus tested here and the same is true for 1440p as well though naturally of these CPUs the 22 energy gets the closest defining the 10 seventies limits it's not until you reach 4k a resolution at the ten seventy isn't designed for that we finally see a GPU limited scenario getting back to Tony P in 1440p though I do realize that the GTX 1070 is still a fairly powerful and reasonably expensive GPU most entry-level CPU owners would be looking at more like say a GTX 1050 or rx 560 for example however remember we are using ultra type quality settings here granted in this whole we are using Tim's optimized settings but they are still very high overall in terms of visual quality those using a low end GPU will likely want to reduce the quality settings and an effort to raise the framerate and target something like 60fps and therefore you are really hunting for the same kind of framerate shown here with the gtx 1070 if all you want is a console like 30fps then your choice a cpu doesn't really matter moving on Assassin's Creed origins provides us with some rather different margins here the 2200 G offers slightly better performance than the dual-core processors 55% more performance than the 200 G and at least 40% more than the G 5400 though the margin did extend up to 55% at the 4k resolution the dual core SMT enabled 200 G E and G 5400 really struggle with this title and are only just able to deliver playable performance frame rates with the 2200 G were worlds better to be honest and frame rates were knocking on the door of 60fps here we see with the gtx 1070 even the 2200 g would be leaving performance on the table at 1080p with the very high quality preset you'd see much the same at 1440p while 4k and does become extremely GPU bound again the 22 energy is certainly looking like the best value option for those using a discrete GPU next up we have battlefield 1 and here the 22 energy was 51% faster than the 200g at 1080p and 24% faster than the Pentium G 5400 those margins were also seen at 1440p and then reduced quite heavily at for case we start to become GPU bound here with the 2200 G throw in the GTX 1074 a reference and here we see at 1080p we'd still be heavily CPU bound while the GPU becomes the performance limiting factor at 1440p for the 2000 g and g 5400 then at 4k we're heavily GPU bound with the 1070 with all three CPUs Forza horizon for isn't a CPU intensive game and as you can see even the Athlon 200 GE enables a great gaming experience the pentium g 5400 was a little faster and then the 22 energy a little faster again but overall a similar experience with all three cpus throw in the gtx 1070 and we're still GPU bound at all three resolutions so this is a good example of a gaming title that is mostly GPU bound I think it's fair to say most games probably are GPU limited rather than CPU limited so this is a good representation of how these CPUs will perform in most titles of course for this video we are primarily focusing on CPU intensive tunnels this is where you'll run into the most trouble with a Laura and CPU the often NPC heavy hitman is a CPU intensive title and here we see the Athlon 200 G really struggling and basically failing this test as it often dipped below 30 FPS the pentium g 5400 was better but even then we did see regular dips below 30 FPS in order to keep frame rates above 30 FPS you will require the 2200 g so for this title the quad-core CPUs not really optional it's more mandatory it's a must-have item over the 200 G e and g 5400 then throw in the gtx 10:17 again we're still heavily CPU bound eternity P even with the risin 320 200 G the quad-core apu though is right on the edge of 1440p and then at 4k we are mostly GPU bound moving on we have project cars - and here the pentium g 5400 really struggles with its frame time performance average framerate performance is comparable to the 200 G with both falling just shy of 60 FPS of course the game was but as we've found many times already the 22 energy offers a significant performance boost at 1080p the rise in three APU was at least 57 percent faster than 39 percent faster or 1440p and then finally 29% faster at 4k when looking at the gtx 1070 results we see that the 2200 g can maximize this GPU at 1080p in 1440p whereas the other two CPUs can't then of course once again we are GPU bound with all three processes at the 4k resolution Rainbow six siege ideally requires a true quad-core processor though having said that the Athlon 200 GE does enable highly playable performance in our test still at 1080p the 2200 G was 41 percent faster while the G 5400 was 17% faster the margin does close up a little at 1440p and then we see it completely neutralized at 4k had I primarily tested with a gtx 1070 then the margins would certainly be much smaller as all three cpus can max out this GP at 1080p and therefore 1440p and 4k ii last game tested is Star Wars Battlefront 2 and here we see some pretty weak performance from the Athlon 200 GE attorney P the G 5400 was 33% faster and the 2200 G 67% faster that said frame time performance of the dual-core g50 422 energy was comparable the 2200 g was at least 51% faster here then at 1440p and 4k the 2200 g maintains a strong advantage in frame time performance over the dual-core processors throwing in the gtx 1070 shows that none of these CPUs can max it out at 1080p while the 22 g and g 5400 can at 1440p though the G 5400 s frame time performance will still be weak as we're looking at the average frame rate here then at 4k all three CPUs can max out the GTX 970 but we're talking about an average of 35 fps finally we have shadow of the Tomb Raider and here the dual-core 200 g and g 5400 tanked in a big way neither were able to deliver playable performance in our test this is certainly not a dual-core friendly title and we will no doubt see many more of these moving forward the game ran reasonably well in the 2200 G but was basically broken on the dual cause with the gtx 1070 even the 2200 g is leaving loads of performance on the table at 1080p and 1440p and by the time we hit 4k we're pretty much GPU bound with an average of just 33 FPS chances are with the gtx 1070 you dot for medium quality settings to try and lift up the framerate okay so we can conclude a few things based on the testing seen in this video and i will start with the Athlon 200 G II and Pentium G 50 for comparison of course we're going to have to pretend that the G 5400 is selling at or at least near the $64 u.s. MSRP rather than the current 110 dollar u.s. asking price and that would mean need 200 G E and G 5400 costs roughly the same amount of money so that being the case which one of the two should you buy those of you planning on using a discrete GPU will for the most part be best served by the Pentium G 5400 as it was on average 16 percent faster at NEP we did see a few scenarios where the Intel CPU was up to 30% faster that said for the most part we did see comparable frame time performance so probably bring that closer down to the 16% we saw on average anyway if you plan on using a discrete GPU the G 5400 will provide the best experience of these two CPUs that said there are still a few reasons why you might pick the Athlon 200 G over the G 5400 assuming they were selling for the same price right now you'd obviously go with the AMD processor in today's market as it's almost half the price but yeah in my hypothetical scenario here with our similar prices they still could be some reasons why you might buy the 200 G 8 for example 8 packs significantly better integrated graphics therm Italy you won't use that if you are using a discrete graphics card and that said it you might be lured by the superior platform at least in my opinion the a m4 platform is superior especially at the entry level because you can buy a be 350 or be 450 motherboard that'll support a rise in 7 2700 processor for example and those cost about $60 u.s. meanwhile I'd suggest you're looking at about $70 us for a decent quality B 360 motherboard or hundred dollars for a basic Zed 370 board and again I suspect that both of those boards probably will throttle with a high and a six or a court Intel processor I also suspected that where at the end of the road for 300 series chipsets there'll be no new CPUs at least no new CPUs well into the future with known shrinks and more performance and that kind of good stuff you will probably just see refreshes at this point so not terribly exciting for the Intel 300 series boards on the other side of that though we have the AMD 300 series and 400 series chipsets such as your be 350 boards and your be 450 boards pretty much any AM for board and they will support the upcoming 7 nanometers in true CPU so yeah that's kind of nice this means while the G 5400 is hands down the better gaming CPU with a discrete GPU even at $64 u.s. it's not really the obvious choice while the current want her intend all the us price as I've said makes it a complete not a write-off at the end of the day though for anyone with a big enough budget to include well any kind of discrete graphics card I wouldn't even bother with the Athlon 200 GE it's a locked part which in my opinion makes it virtually worthless for those trying to maximize value admittedly it is a great sort of general computing type product it's excellent for web browsing getting emails and all that kind of stuff so probably you know a really great CPU for building a budget system for office use or your parents or your grandparents or whatever I imagine that most of you almost everyone watching this video would be world's better off spending the $40 more to land the rise in 320 200 G just a much more capable CPU and therefore in my opinion there's no real reason to even consider the 200 GE also something that I didn't touch on in this video but we have covered numerous times in the past on the channel is the overclocking potential of the 2200 G so there is some more free performance to be had so this really means it is the best value entry-level CPU available right now and spending less than $100 us on something else doesn't really end up saving you any money at all at least in my opinion and with that I am going to end this one if you enjoy the video well please hit the like button for us that's much appreciated subscribe for more content just like this and if you appreciate the work we do have our box then consider supporting us on patreon thank you for watching I'm your host Steve see you next time