Marrying Vega and Zen: The AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Review
by Ian Cutress on February 12, 2018 9:00 AM ESTConclusion: Raising the Bar for Integrated Graphics
The march on integrated graphics has come and gone in rapid spurts: the initial goal of providing a solution that provides enough performance for general office work has bifurcated into something that also aims gives a good gaming experience. Despite AMD and NVIDIA being the traditional gaming graphics companies, in this low-end space, it has required companies with x86 CPUs and compatible graphics IP to complete, meaning AMD and Intel. While going toe-to-toe for a number of years, with Intel dedicating over half of its silicon area to graphics at various points, the battle has become one-sided - Intel in the end only produced its higher performance solutions for specific customers willing to pay for it, while AMD marched up the performance by offering a lower cost solution as an alternative to discrete graphics cards that served little purpose beyond monitor output devices. This has come to a head, signifying a clear winner: AMD's graphics is the choice for an integrated solution, so much so that Intel is buying AMD's Vega silicon, a custom version, for its own mid-range integrated graphics. For AMD, that's a win. Now with the new Ryzen APUs, AMD has risen that low-end bar again.
If there was any doubt that AMD holds the integrated graphics crown, when we compare the new Ryzen APUs against Intel's latest graphics solutions, there is a clear winner. For almost all the 1080p benchmarks, the Ryzen APUs are 2-3x better in every metric. We can conclude that Intel has effectively given over this integrated graphics space to AMD at this point, deciding to focus on its encode/decode engines rather than raw gaming and 3D performance. With AMD having DDR4-2933 as the supported memory frequency on the APUs, assuming memory can be found for a reasonable price, it gaming performance at this price is nicely impressive.
When we compare the Ryzen 5 2400G with any CPU paired with the NVIDIA GT 1030, both solutions are within a few percent of each other in all of our 1080p benchmarks. The NVIDIA GT 1030 is a $90 graphics card, which when paired with a CPU, gets you two options: either match the combined price with the Ryzen 5 2400G, which leaves $80 for a CPU, giving a Pentium that loses in anything multi-threaded to AMD; or just increases the cost fo the system to get a CPU that is equivalent in performance. Except for chipset IO, the Intel + GT 1030 route offers no benefits over the AMD solution: it costs more, for a budget-constrained market, and draws more power overall. There's also the fact that the AMD APUs come with a Wraith Stealth 65W cooler, which adds additional value to the package that Intel doesn't seem to want to match.
For the compute benchmarks, Intel is still a clear winner with single threaded tests, with a higher IPC and higher turbo frequency. That is something that AMD might be able to catch up with on 12nm Zen+ coming later this year, which should offer a higher frequency, but Zen 2 is going to be the next chance to bridge this gap. If we compare the multi-threaded tests, AMD with 4C/8T and Intel 6C/6T seem to battle it out depending if a test can use multi-threading appropriately, but compared to Kaby Lake 4C/4T or 2C/4T offerings, AMD comes out ahead.
With the Ryzen 5 2400G, AMD has completely shut down the sub-$100 graphics card market. As a choice for gamers on a budget, those building systems in the region of $500, it becomes the processor to pick.
For the Ryzen 3 2200G, we want to spend more time analyzing the effect of a $99 quad-core APU the market, as well as looking how memory speed affects performance, especially with integrated graphics. There's also the angle of overclocking - with AMD showing a 20-25% frequency increase on the integrated graphics, we want to delve into how to unlock potential bottlenecks in a future article.
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Hurr Durr - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
I don`t care about these. I want to see how AMD is holding up in notebooks, 15W range specifically.Hul8 - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
For a low-end graphics part like this, it would be really interesting to have a section in the review exploring the "comfortable" settings in various games.It could be really useful information for potential buyers to know what kind of settings they'd need to run in a game to reach their preferred performance level (99th percentile), whether it's 30, 45 or 60 fps, and also to know if a product simply can't reach certain performance no matter how low you turn the settings.
DrizztVD - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Why do you only report total power consumption? I'd like to see power efficiency!!! Since I don't know what the performance per CPU is, these power measurements mean almost nothing. Also, the efficiency will change with the workload, so Prime95 is a very one-dimensional test of efficiency. Look at your power measurement graphs: they tell you what we already know - single core speeds are lower for Ryzen, and lower TDP CPUs use less power. That's kinda duh...JHBoricua - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
I'm confused. The AMD vs. AMD section led me to believe there was going to be a comparison of Raven Ridge against Bristol Ridge APUs, which makes sense as it would have allow the use of the same motherboard for both APUs, even if the Bristol Ridge DDR4 memory was clocked slower. But then actual benchmarks is showing Kaveri parts?prtskg - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
Kaveri was better at gaming/performance than Bristol. The latter had the advantage of efficiency.nwarawa - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Comparing with a competitive Intel platform with dGPU is kinda tricky right now. It's not just the dGPUs that are ridiculously priced right now. RAM is too. And to maximize performance on the R7 2400G, you WILL need to spend more than the basic $90 8GB 2400 kit. The cheapest 16GB Samsung b-die 3200 kit I found was $220. And you will want to go with a 16GB kit, because already some newer games use more than 8GB, and they use MORE when using graphics cards with less than 4GB. The iGPU takes some of that 8GB for itself...if runs out of system RAM, it has to use your system disk... enjoy the single digit frame rates...Here is what I found on newegg:
INTEL
$130 - i3-8100
$90 - 8GB 2400 RAM (or 170 for 16GB)
$120 - Z370 motherboard (no mainsteam chipset YET)
===
$340
AMD
$170 - R5 2400g
$220 - 16GB 3200C14 RAM
$80 - Motherboard(cheapest decently reviewed AM4)
===
$470
The intel system is a full $130 cheaper (or $50 if you spring for the 16GB), and that gap will only increase with the upcoming cheaper chipsets and/or upcoming coffee lake models. Now, I haven't included the dGPU yet, but the GTX1050 2GB currently goes for $150 - making the Intel system total only $20 more than than AMD system, and running rings around it in most games (although neither would be ideal for the latest games... the 2GB-GPU/8GB-SYSRAM Intel system would run out of memory and the Vega 11 just doesn't have the horsepower).
What would put things in favor of AMD would be if they made clear that the iGPU would still be of use when using a dGPU (such as with the new "ThueAudioNext") in the future.
What I would REALLY like to see, though, is AMD use the beefier Vega iGPUs Intel is using with their own 12nm Zen+ chips and slap on some HBM memory. THAT I could go for.
oleyska - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Jeez,1.\ HBM on budget chips pushes them into 250$ range by just adding HBM.
2.\ IGP solutions are not a GTX1060 replacement, it's not magic.
System comparison:
I3 8100 is inferior in cpu tasks.
it has half the memory (intel IGP still uses memory you know?, it's configurable on both systems.
The benchmarked system runs at 2933, not 3200 so o.0
it has inferior gpu 3X~
even at same memory speeds it would still be 2X as slow, slower cpu.
So what is the point of the argument ?
It not needed to have the extra memory frequency but if you want to replace a 80$ dedicated gpu you need to and definitely add 8gb extra memory and that's where the cost comes into place as a valid comparison if you subtract 20$ from AMD for 2933 ~
add 80-100$ for GT1030 you still end up with an intel rig with higher system power consumption, equal gaming performance, inferior cpu and you will have to buy a G-sync monitor if you want tearing free monitor while freesync is thrown at ya at any price range as an added bonus.
systems are comparable and Intel's I3 line is destroyed along amd's old R3 line too.
I5,I7 and R5 stands tall still and the R7 has it's place at times too.
nwarawa - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Did you not even read my post? Or the review for that matter? Did you think AT ALL about the real life application of anything said before posting? "I3 8100 is inferior in cpu tasks" WHAT tasks? I'll answer that for you. Rendering. If you are trying to get the cheapest CPU possible for rendering with as little RAM as possible to shave as much money off as possible... you are doing it wrong. Since we (or at least I am... not sure what you are going on about) are talking about GPUs, you can safely assume we are concerned about GAMES."it has half the memory" no s--t, sherlock, read the post again (or for the first time, apparently)
I could go on, but apparently you were just scouring the posts for someone to disagree with with a pre-defined little rant, so I won't bother.
Fritzkier - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Why you need 16GB? if you bought Ryzen APU, you probably only plays e-sport title anyway and some older games... E-sport titles doesn't need a huge RAM. And it already crush the intel counterparts, both in performance and price.You guys from first world countries are always complaining. Jeez. Try to live at poorer countries like South East Asia.
serendip - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
An APU at $100 would still be expensive, especially when people in the developing world build machines with Pentium G chips. The speedy APU graphics would negate the need for a low-end discrete GPU though.