The $60 CPU Question: AMD Athlon 200GE or Intel Pentium Gold G5400? A Review
by Ian Cutress on January 14, 2019 8:00 AM ESTOverclocking the Athlon 200GE
In recent weeks, motherboard manufacturers have been releasing BIOS firmware that enables overcooking on the Athlon 200GE. It appears that this has come through an oversight in one of the base AMD firmware revisions that motherboard vendors are now incorporating into their firmware bundles. This is obviously not what AMD expected; the Athlon is the solitary consumer desktop chip on AMD's AM4 platform that is not overclockable. Since MSI first starting going public with new firmware revisions, others have followed suit, including ASRock and GIGABYTE. There is no word if this change will be permanent: AMD might patch it in future revisions it sends out to the motherboard vendors, or those vendors will continue to patch around it. As it stands, however, a good number motherboards can now offer this functionality.
The question does arise if there is even a point to overclocking these chips. They are very cheap, they usually go into cheap motherboards that might not even allow overclocking, and they are usually paired with cheaper coolers. The extra money spent on either an overclocking enabled motherboard or even spending $20 on a cooler might as well be put into upgrading the CPU to a Ryzen 3 2200G, with four cores and better integrated graphics, which comes with a better stock cooler and stomps all over Intel's Pentium line, and is also overclockable without special firmware. The standard response to 'why overclock' is 'because we can', which if you've lived in that part of the industry is more than enough justification.
Given that our resident motherboard editor, Gavin, has been on a crusade through 2018 looking at the scaling performance of the AMD APUs, I asked if he could do a few overclocking tests for us.
Overclocking the 200GE
Enabling our MSI motherboard with the latest overclocking BIOS was no different to any other BIOS flash, and with it, the multiplier options opened up for the chip. Even though AMD's chips can go in quarter multiplier steps, we could only push this processor in full multiplier jumps of 100 MHz, but with a little bit of voltage using our usual overclocking methodology, we managed to get 3.9 GHz without any trouble.
To be fair, we are using a good cooler here, but to be honest, the thermals were not much of a problem. Our practical limit was the voltage frequency response of the chip at the end of the day, and our 3.9 GHz matches what other people have seen. The base frequency is locked, so there is little room for fine adjustments on that front.
At each stage of the overclock, we ran our Blender test. The gains went up almost linearly, leading to a 20% performance throughput increase from the stock frequency to the best frequency.
Thoughts
A 21 percent performance increase across the range of benchmarks would put the 200GE either on par with Intel on most tests or even further ahead on the tests it already wins. This now changes our conclusion somewhat, as explained on the next page.
If you want to see a full suite test at the overclocked speed, leave a comment below and we'll set something up in January.
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Irata - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
The price push happened after the release - but do check Anandtech graphics cards reviews - they do have a tendency of mentioning current street / retail prices for both AMD and nVidia cards, which is how it should be.This is from the RX580 review:
"The biggest challenge right now is that GTX 1060 prices have come down to the same $229 spot just in time for the RX 500 series launch, so AMD doesn’t have a consistent price advantage"
yannigr2 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
Assimilator is a known Intel Nvidia hardcore fan. Ignore him.The_Assimilator - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link
Yes, pointing out facts makes me a fanboy. You a Trump voter by any chance?sonny73n - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
@The_AssimiatorAre we not supposed to complain about the misleading pricing - one is Manufacturer’s SUGGESTED Retail Price and the ACTUAL price from the link provided by this article?
If I want to build a cheap office system NOW, should I take this article into consideration despite the huge price differences?
What’s special about the G5400 that its price has tripled due to “shortage”? At $182.68 currently from the link, is there no better CPU from Intel I can get for that price? Is Intel the only CPU manufacturer?
What are you trying to achieve by calling us name? What our criticism to AT has to do with you?
I’ve been restraining myself from criticizing AT too much. AT articles are slow to produce already. I wouldn’t want AT writers quit/fired then we’ll have less to read, even they’re written poorly.
kkilobyte - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
What would have made the most sense is not writing such an article in the first place, then.I take Ian's own words on this: "I'm a big advocate of building a system piece by piece with the best you can afford at the time".
And at the (current) time, it seems that one simply cannot afford the G5400 for $64 (except maybe out of pure luck). This should have been, taken into account into the conclusion, or at least underlined.
AnnoyedGrunt - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
Neither of these CPUs makes much sense. The G5400 isn't readily available (sold out on Newegg or only available from re-sellers for $100, as is the G5500 or G5600).Once you are spending $100, it makes much more sense to get the Ryzen 2200G for the same price that typically outperforms both of these (or only loses by a little to the G5400 in office type of tasks). The 2200G actually looks pretty decent as an IGP solution, and is a much better platform once you go to a dedicated GPU as well.
I'd personally work a few extra hours and save up for the 2200G over either of these options.
-AG
Valantar - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
Despite all the complaints here of comparing products at very different price points (retail, not MSRP), I would still like to see a more complete test suite run on the overclocked 200GE, especially the gaming tests.Also, is iGPU overclocking possible on this chip, or are iGPU frequencies locked? It would also be very interesting for you to part out example builds of this vs. the G5400 and the Ryzen 3 2200G, to see the difference in actual system cost.
br83taylor - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
Are those power figures correct? If you compare Ryzen 3 2200g for 20W and Ryzen 3 1300X at 58W. A third of the power but same 4C4T configuration.Zoolook13 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
For what it's worth, in Sweden the prices match pretty well 695 SEK for a 220GE vs 759 SEK for a G5400.Zoolook13 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
Sorry that ended up in the wrong place, edit button ftw...