The $60 CPU Question: AMD Athlon 200GE or Intel Pentium Gold G5400? A Review

Conclusion: 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.

1. Are you going to need the integrated graphics for gaming or compute?
2. 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!