The $60 CPU Question: AMD Athlon 200GE or Intel Pentium Gold G5400? A Review
by Ian Cutress on January 14, 2019 8:00 AM ESTGaming: Far Cry 5
The latest title in Ubisoft's Far Cry series lands us right into the unwelcoming arms of an armed militant cult in Montana, one of the many middles-of-nowhere in the United States. With a charismatic and enigmatic adversary, gorgeous landscapes of the northwestern American flavor, and lots of violence, it is classic Far Cry fare. Graphically intensive in an open-world environment, the game mixes in action and exploration.
Far Cry 5 does support Vega-centric features with Rapid Packed Math and Shader Intrinsics. Far Cry 5 also supports HDR (HDR10, scRGB, and FreeSync 2). We use the in-game benchmark for our data, and report the average/minimum frame rates.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | |||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | High | |
| Far Cry 5 | FPS | Mar 2018 |
DX11 | 720p Low |
1080p Normal |
4K Ultra |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Far Cry 5 | IGP | Low | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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As with the other tests, the G5400 wins out here.
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mczak - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Yes, I'd expect at least the Athlon to be quite close to its TDP with simultaneous CPU+IGP load.The Pentium probably not really (although the Pentium G5500/G5600 could get close, as these have the GT2 (UHD 630) rather than the GT1 (UHD 610) graphics, which also should be much more competitive with the Athlon).
biiiipy - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
In my country the cheapest I can find is 200GE for 50€ andG5400 for 90€... yeah...ET - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Very nice to see a low end comparison, and a quite comprehensive one at that.What I don't understand is why quite a few benchmarks (especially on the IGP tests) are missing some of the CPUs.
Rudde - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
The test setup table doesn't include the G5400.shabby - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
The g5400 is $183 on amazon...T1beriu - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
You should have measured the power consumption for 100% CPU load + 100% GPU load, lile POV + Furmark?Flunk - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
These are close enough that I would buy whichever I could get cheaper (with a compatible board of course).Targon - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Of course, if you are looking to start low but then upgrade later, socket AM4 will allow upgrades from the lowest end to top end.edzieba - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
So could the Pentium, right to the 9900k.eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
@Ian: thanks, and I agree with your conclusion, but only if the ~$60 mark is a hard upper limit. Take-home for me: if you believe that you're going to be working and gaming on the iGPU of the chip even for a few months, try as hard as you can to get the extra $40 and buy the Ryzen 2200 G instead, which retails for $99 or so. That is still the value king here, and by a big margin. Unlike either the Pentium or the Athlon, the 4 cores and the (much beefier) iGPU of the 2200G can provide the 25-30 frames/second in many of the games tested here, has generally superior performance on non-gaming applications as well, and, once the dedicated graphics card arrives, it still gives a better showing than either Athlon or Pentium. Plus, as Gavin here and others on their sites have shown, there is significant headroom left for overclocking if that extra 10% or so is a must-have. So, long in short: For a budget system, and if at all possible, get the Ryzen 2200G. It is well worth the 40 bucks more.