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!
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
95 Comments
View All Comments
kkilobyte - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
s/i3/Pentium. Obviously :)freedom4556 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
I think you messed up your charts for Civ 6's IGP testing. That or why are you testing the IGP at 1080p Ultra when all the other IGP tests are at 720p Low?freedom4556 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Also, the 8k and 16k tests are pointless wastes of time. Especially in this review, but also in the others. Your low/med/high/ultra should be 720p/1080p/1440p/4k if you want to actually represent the displays people are purchasing.nevcairiel - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
The Civ6 tests are like that because thats when it really starts to scale like the other games. Look at its IGP vs Low, which is 1080p vs 4K. The values are almost identical (and still pretty solid). Only if you move to 8K and then 16K you see the usual performance degredation you would see with other games.AnnoyedGrunt - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
I second this motion. Please have settings to cover the various common monitor choices. 1080P is an obvious choice, but 1440P should be there too, along with 4K. I don't think you need to run two 4K versions, or two 1080P versions, or whatever. I have a 1440P monitor so it would be nice to see where I become GPU limited as opposed to CPU limited. Maybe Civ6 could use some extra high resolutions in the name of science, but to be useful, you should at least include the 1440P on all games.Thanks.
-AG
eddieobscurant - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Another pro intel article from Ian, who hopes that someday intel will hire himPeachNCream - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
The numbers in the chart speak for themselves. You don't have to acknowledge the conclusion text. It's only a recommendation anyway. Even though I'd personally purchase a 200GE if I were in the market, I don't think there is any sort of individual bias coming into play. Where the 200GE is relevant, gaming on the IGP, Ian recommended it. In other cases the G5400 did come out ahead by enough of a margin to make it worth consideration. The only flaw I could tease out of this is the fact that the recommendation is based on MSRP and as others have noted, the G5400 is significantly above MSRP right now. It may have been good to acknowledge that in the intro and conclusion in a stronger manner, but that means the article may not stand up as well to the test of time for someone browsing this content six months later after searching for advice on the relevant CPUs via Google.kkilobyte - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Acknowledge "in a stronger manner"? Well, it is actually not acknowledged in the conclusion at all!The title of the article is: "The $60 CPU question". One of those CPU is clearly not being sold at $60 on average, but is priced significantly higher. I think the article should have compared CPUs that are really available at (around) $60.
So maybe there is no personal bias - but there is clearly ignorance of the market state. And that's surprizing, since the G5400 price was above its MSRP for several months already; how could a professional journalist in the field ignore that?
I guess it could be objected that "MSRP always was used in the past as the reference price". Granted - but it made sense while the MSRP was close to the real market price. It doesn't anymore once the gap gets big, which is the case for tbe G5400. Nobody gives a damn about the theorical price if it is applied nowhere on the market.
And the 'numbers of chart' don't 'speak for themselves' - they are basically comparing CPUs whose retail price, depending on where you get them, show a 20-40% price gap. What's the point? Why isn't there a price/performance graph, as there were in past reviews? The graphs could just as well include high-end CPUs, and would be just as useless.
If I want to invest ~$60 in a CPU, I'm not interested to know how a ~$90 one performs!
sonny73n - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
+1I couldn’t have said it better myself.
cheshirster - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 - link
Yes, 5400 is priced nowhere near 60$ and reviewer definitely knows it, but fails to mention this in conclusion.