The $60 CPU Question: AMD Athlon 200GE or Intel Pentium Gold G5400? A Review
by Ian Cutress on January 14, 2019 8:00 AM ESTConclusion: Split Strategy
Battling CPUs at $60 is going to be a tough call. Do you throw the best hardware around the chip that money can buy to compare the absolute limits of the hardware under ideal conditions, or do you keep it more reasonable for the price bracket it is intended for? I'm a big advocate of building a system piece by piece with the best you can afford at the time, rather than spreading out over several below average components at once, so I guess my suggested situation falls into neither the all-out or budget options. In our comparison of the G5400 and the 200GE however, the results are fairly clear-cut.
When deciding between these two processors, there's a hierarchy of questions you need to ask.
- Are you going to need the integrated graphics for gaming or compute?
- Do you already have good overclocking tools?
If the answer is yes to either of those, then the processor to get is the AMD Athlon 200GE. But the base answer for anyone getting a discrete graphics card, or a fresh system with a graphics card, then the answer is the Intel Pentium G5400.
Let me explain.
In all of our CPU and office benchmarks, except for those that are 'floating point' heavy (run math with fractions rather than whole numbers), then the Intel processor is the clear winner. There's no mistaking where it sits in our tests - it often beats the AMD chip by 8 to 20 percent.
In gaming with a discrete graphics card, for example, if you've invested in something like the GTX 1080, the Intel Pentium will push more frames and higher minimums in practically every test at every resolution.
If I were building a work and play system for anyone in my family, out of the two I'd take the Pentium G5400.
There are two situations in which I'd take the Athlon, however. If the system was a true budget gaming system, going for good 720p action without a discrete card, then the Athlon is the obvious choice. It knocks six shades out of the Pentium for its integrated graphics performance.
The other exception is if I already have a good motherboard and cooler to hand, and that motherboard allows me to overclock. I wouldn't go out of my way to invest in these parts for a specific build, but if I had them to spare and still had to choose between the two, then I'd get the Athlon in this situation as well, then push it to a good frequency.
But the baseline choice remains the Intel Pentium G5400 in this shoot-out.
If you want to compare either processor with any of the other processors we've tested on AnandTech, don't forget to check out our benchmark database comparison pages!
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Ratman6161 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
One issue is though that at my favored place to buy CPU's (microcenter.com) The 2200G isn't $40 more, its only $30 more. The 200GE is $49.99 and the 2200G is $79.99. Add to that you can get a B450 motherboard for $59.99. So for just $30 more for the total system price and the fact that the 2200G/B450 combo guarantees overclocking capability, I couldn't really see going with either of the CPU's in this review.eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Fully agree, and, at those prices (2200G at $ 79.99, plus mobo for $59.99), it's even more a closed and shut case. Neither the Athlon nor the Pentium come anywhere near the 2200G, especially if the iGPU is "it", which is likely for a budget system. The only scenario I can see for a builder to chose the Athlon or the Pentium is if they a. are on sale, and b. if it's for one's parents or grandparents, and all they want to do is browse the web and some occasional light office work. But, even there, if one can swing the extra $30, why not get the much more capable 2200G? With the added ability to play some games, maybe you'll visit more often (:GreenReaper - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
I was thinking this throughout - "wow, this review is a great advertisement for the 2200G!"Personally I'd like to wait for a chip with AV1 support, Navi and PCIe 4.0, but it seems likely that you'll be able to upgrade to all of that at a later date if you pick your motherboard right.
DominionSeraph - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Can you put the venerable i5 2500 in the new Bench? With used systems available for $90 it's the price/performance champion.jordanclock - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
On the Overclocking page:"In recent weeks, motherboard manufacturers have been releasing BIOS firmware that enables overcooking on the Athlon 200GE."
I know OCing can increase temperatures, but calling it overcooking might be a little strong.
mczak - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Ian,I think you might want to rephrase every paragraph which has "AVX" in it. From your wording it sounds like you're surprised the pentium doesn't benefit much from the use of AVX, whereas the truth is it doesn't support AVX at all, hence even if you use avx-optimized binaries it's still going to use an sse-only path.
This is of course a reversal of the other Core chips vs. Ryzen - intel typically benefits quite a bit more from AVX code, since it actually has simd units which are physically 256bit wide, whereas Ryzen only has simd units which are 128bit wide.
GreenReaper - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
I agree, I was a little confused when I saw talk of AVX for the Pentium - don't get me wrong, SSE optimizations can provide great benefits (compare 'openssl speed -evp' to 'openssl speed' on a Celeron), and probably they are used by the "optimized" path but it's not going to give the same results.As you say, "supports" is debatable on Ryzen. But even if a CPU didn't really support it on a hardware level at all (which is not the case), its use might result in improvements due to the ability to provide a microcode equivalent than is faster than the SSE-based alternatives.
silverblue - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
It's not really debatable in my eyes - it may be half-speed, but there's no AVX offset - as far as I can tell - to worry about. When Zen 2 pops up, perhaps it'll have to behave more like Intel's implementation.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
Agree. After all, in the Intel universe, the absence of AVX is a key differentiator between the Pentium and the core i3; if you want hardware-supported AVX extensions, you have to fork over the extra $$$ and get at least the entry-level core chip.kkilobyte - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
I'd like to know where one would find the G5400 at 60$, or even at the same price as the 200GE.I don't seem to be able to find the G5400 in Europe for less than 75€. On the other hand, I can get a 2000GE at 55-60€.
For example, Materiel.net - one of the most popular online shops in France and Belgium, has the cheapest Intel i3, the G4900, at 67.95€, while the 200GE is 57.95€. And the G5400? They list it as 'out of stock', at more than 100€ (!)
If both where at the same price, indeed, the Intel CPU would be more interesting. But if it's either unavailable or 20-50% more than the price given in the article, what's the point?