Marrying Vega and Zen: The AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Review
by Ian Cutress on February 12, 2018 9:00 AM ESTiGPU Gaming Performance, Continued
Rise of the Tomb Raider
One of the most comprehensive games in the gaming benchmark suite is Rise of the Tomb Raider (RoTR), developed by Crystal Dynamics, and the sequel to the popular Tomb Raider which was loved for its automated benchmark mode. But don’t let that fool you: the benchmark mode in RoTR is very much different this time around.
Visually, the previous Tomb Raider pushed realism to the limits with features such as TressFX, and the new RoTR goes one stage further when it comes to graphics fidelity. This leads to an interesting set of requirements in hardware: some sections of the game are typically GPU limited, whereas others with a lot of long-range physics can be CPU limited, depending on how the driver can translate the DirectX 12 workload.
The GT 1030 sweeps the top spot against AMD here, though only by small margins most of the time. The AMD APUs still offer a commanding 2-3x performance jump over Intel's product line, and even more when price is factored into the equation.
Rocket League
Hilariously simple and embodying the elements of pick-up-and-play, Rocket League allows users to jump into a game with other people (or bots) to play football with cars with zero rules. The title is built on Unreal Engine 3, which is somewhat old at this point, but it allows users to run the game on super-low-end systems while still taxing the big ones. Since the release in 2015, it has sold over 5 million copies and seems to be a fixture at LANs and game shows. Users who train get very serious, playing in teams and leagues with very few settings to configure, and everyone is on the same level. Rocket League is quickly becoming one of the favored titles for e-sports tournaments, especially when e-sports contests can be viewed directly from the game interface.
With Rocket League, there is no benchmark mode, so we have to perform a series of automated actions, similar to a racing game having a fixed number of laps. We take the following approach: Using Fraps to record the time taken to show each frame (and the overall frame rates), we use an automation tool to set up a consistent 4v4 bot match on easy, with the system applying a series of inputs throughout the run, such as switching camera angles and driving around.
As the more eSports oriented title in our testing, Rocket League is less graphically intense than the others, and by being built on DX9, also tends to benefit from a good single thread performance. The GT 1030 wins again here, most noticably in the 99th percentile numbers, but the AMD chips are hitting 30 FPS in that percentile graph, whereas in the last generation they were getting 30 FPS average. That is a reasonable step up in performance, aided both to the graphics and the high-performance x86 cores. It will be interesting to see how the memory speed changes the results here.
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haplo602 - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
Finally one review where I can see the driver version ... So this is the same driver used also for the Ryzen mobile APUs. Can you check if you can force/manual install the latest Adrenaline drivers ? That works on some of the Ryzen 2500u chips and actually increases the performance by some 15+% ...haplo602 - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
I hope there's a memory scaling article in the future with frequency and CL scaling for the APU part ...crotach - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
What about HTPC use?I was considering GT 1030 + Intel route for H265 and HDR10 playback and was really looking forward to Zen APUs, but there doesn't seem to be any motherboards with HDMI 2.0?!
Also, I wonder if the chips can be undervolted and underclocked to bring them to a near silent noise level for the living room.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
You can undervolt and underclock ANY intel or amd cpu.forgerone - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
What most writers and critics of integrated graphics processors such as AMD's APU or Intel iGP all seem to forget, is not EVERYONE in the world has a disposable or discretionary income equal to that of the United States, Europe, Japan etc. Not everyone can afford bleeding edge gaming PC's or laptops. Food, housing and clothing must come first for 80% of the population of the world.An APU can grant anyone who can afford at least a decent basic APU the enjoyment of playing most computer games. The visual quality of these games may not be up to the arrogantly high standards of most western gamers, but then again these same folks who are happy to have an APU also can not barely afford a 750p crt monitor much less a 4k flat screen.
This simple idea is huge not only for the laptop and pc market but especially game developers who can only expect to see an expansion of their Total Addressable Market. And that is good for everybody as broader markets help reduce the cost of development.
This in fact was the whole point behind AMD's release of Mantle and Microsoft and The Kronos Group's release of DX12 and Vulkan respectively.
Today's AMD APU has all of the power of a GPU Add In Board of not more than a several years back.
krazyfrog - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
Why did you leave out the 8400 and the 1500X in these comparisons?Kamgusta - Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - link
Because these CPUs, while having the same price range, outperform these Raven Ridge chips. That would have been a bad press for AMD and it seems like Anandtech wants to remains extremely loyal to AMD in these days.msroadkill612 - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
"the data shows both how far integrated graphics has come, and how far it still has to go to qualify for those 'immerse experiences' that Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA all claim are worth reaching for, with higher resolutions and higher fidelity. "This assumes a static situation which is rot.
what it reveals is that in the current paradigm, coders have coded accordingly for satisfactory results. If the paradigm changes and other ways work better, then code evolves.
This unprecedented integration of new gen, sibling cpu & gpu, offers many performance upsides too for future code.
picture a mobo with a discrete gpu like an equivalent 1030, then picture a ~matchbox footprint apu - there is a huge difference in the size of the respective circuits - yet they both do the same job & have to send a lot of data to each other.
it's not hard to figure which is inherently superior in many ways.
I strongly disagree with your blinkered bias.
Pork@III - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
There is something unfinished, something inconsolable.elites2012 - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
anything this chip lost to intel at, was most likely outdated. adobe, fcat, dolphin, pov are all outdated benchmarks.