Marrying Vega and Zen: The AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Review
by Ian Cutress on February 12, 2018 9:00 AM ESTBenchmarking Performance: CPU System Tests
Our first set of tests is our general system tests. These set of tests are meant to emulate more about what people usually do on a system, like opening large files or processing small stacks of data. This is a bit different to our office testing, which uses more industry standard benchmarks, and a few of the benchmarks here are relatively new and different.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
PDF Opening
First up is a self-penned test using a monstrous PDF we once received in advance of attending an event. While the PDF was only a single page, it had so many high-quality layers embedded it was taking north of 15 seconds to open and to gain control on the mid-range notebook I was using at the time. This put it as a great candidate for our 'let's open an obnoxious PDF' test. Here we use Adobe Reader DC, and disable all the update functionality within. The benchmark sets the screen to 1080p, opens the PDF to in fit-to-screen mode, and measures the time from sending the command to open the PDF until it is fully displayed and the user can take control of the software again. The test is repeated ten times, and the average time taken. Results are in milliseconds.
Our PDF test relies mostly on single core frequency, but memory frequency can also help. The 2400G pips the 1400, and the older AMD processors take a back seat. This is the sort of test that Intel's 4.2 GHz chips can take advantage off, as shown by the Core i3-8350K.
FCAT Processing: link
One of the more interesting workloads that has crossed our desks in recent quarters is FCAT - the tool we use to measure stuttering in gaming due to dropped or runt frames. The FCAT process requires enabling a color-based overlay onto a game, recording the gameplay, and then parsing the video file through the analysis software. The software is mostly single-threaded, however because the video is basically in a raw format, the file size is large and requires moving a lot of data around. For our test, we take a 90-second clip of the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark running on a GTX 980 Ti at 1440p, which comes in around 21 GB, and measure the time it takes to process through the visual analysis tool.
The FCAT program is single threaded, so again Intel's chips take a win here. The Ryzen 5 2400G takes another chunk out of the Ryzen 5 1400, due to its higher frequency.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that ray traces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in seconds, where the Wii itself scores 1,052 seconds (17.53 minutes).
3D Movement Algorithm Test v2.1: link
This is the latest version of the self-penned 3DPM benchmark. The goal of 3DPM is to simulate semi-optimized scientific algorithms taken directly from my doctorate thesis. Version 2.1 improves over 2.0 by passing the main particle structs by reference rather than by value, and decreasing the amount of double->float->double recasts the compiler was adding in. It affords a ~25% speed-up over v2.0, which means new data.
3DPM is our first multi-threaded test, and the Ryzen 5 2400G powers ahead over the 1400 due to frequency, and ahead the Core i3-8350K due to thread count. This is a benchmark that can take advantage of multithreading, so the quad-core APU with eight threads pushes ahead of the six-core Intel Core i5-8400.
DigiCortex v1.20: link
Despite being a couple of years old, the DigiCortex software is a pet project for the visualization of neuron and synapse activity in the brain. The software comes with a variety of benchmark modes, and we take the small benchmark which runs a 32k neuron/1.8B synapse simulation. The results on the output are given as a fraction of whether the system can simulate in real-time, so anything above a value of one is suitable for real-time work. The benchmark offers a 'no firing synapse' mode, which in essence detects DRAM and bus speed, however we take the firing mode which adds CPU work with every firing.
Agisoft Photoscan 1.3.3: link
Photoscan stays in our benchmark suite from the previous version, however now we are running on Windows 10 so features such as Speed Shift on the latest processors come into play. The concept of Photoscan is translating many 2D images into a 3D model - so the more detailed the images, and the more you have, the better the model. The algorithm has four stages, some single threaded and some multi-threaded, along with some cache/memory dependency in there as well. For some of the more variable threaded workload, features such as Speed Shift and XFR will be able to take advantage of CPU stalls or downtime, giving sizeable speedups on newer microarchitectures.
For Photoscan, certain elements of the algorithms require full cores to get the best performance, hence why the six-core CPU comes top and the Ryzen 5 2400G and Core i3-8350K are matched. That being said, the multithreading of the 2400G outweighs the extra frequency of the 8350K.
177 Comments
View All Comments
coolhardware - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
I have been holding on to my Intel 2500K desktop for what seems like forever. It has been a trusty companion but with a TDP of 95W and a dedicated GPU pulling 100W+ I'm looking for something a little less power hungry. AMD seems to have what I've been looking for and the price is right :-)Amazon has the 2400G in stock, http://amzn.to/2BVzSSn and I think I'm going to bite the bullet!
PS does anybody have a mobo recommendation for pairing with the 2400G? (stability is my main concern, probably won't OC since the 2400G should be a nice step up from my 2500K)
zaza - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
if already have a decent GPU it is better to get the Ryzen 1600 instead. it is only 10 or 20$ more but you will get two extra and 8 extra PCIe lanes. These APU only make sense as a placeholder to get something better, for example building a working PC, then add a dedicated GPU later.haukionkannel - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Or this will get you very good office computer, without ever needing external GPU...forgerone - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
EXACTLY!!! This is the market for Ryzen with Vega. Business PC's and Laptops and also economy gaming for the markets that can not afford discrete GPU AIB.coolhardware - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Cool, thanks for the tip! How is discrete non-gaming (desktop, Photoshop) GPU power usage these days? I live off the grid and so energy efficiency is a big plus. I do not game much so (SC2 and some lower end Steam games).Also, any suggestions for motherboards for 1600 or 2400G? Again, stability is top criteria for me.
Last question, what's the max number of video outputs for the 2400G? Thx!
coolhardware - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
PS I currently have a GTX 960. It does look like a step down versus the 2400G, as ~1030 (similar benchs to 2400G) is quite a bit lower speed than a 960:http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-96...
Cellar Door - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
The 960 is 2-3x the performance of this.Samus - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
GTX960 is a $200+ GPU. It's substantially faster than any integrated graphics and probably will be for the next few years.msroadkill612 - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
" I live off the grid and so energy efficiency is a big plus." - apuS are exactly what you should be using.WorldWithoutMadness - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
then might as well wait for ryzen+ version.Seriously AMD need to release something akin to NUC using the Raven Ridge. They can rake quite a lot of market with that. I will change my office's PCs with those, better GPU and comparable CPU.