The Best Entry Level Gaming CPU Athlon 200GE VS Pentium G5400

We recently reviewed the $ 60 Athlon 200GE CPU and we already want to go back there for more, but this is October which is busy with coverage that must be owned including the RTX 2070, the Core i9-9900K and the new Threadripper model. But this is finally the time, so we have found a small Zen-based chip that is bold and for comparison takes the Ryzen 3 2200G and Intel Pentium G5400.

We don't include the Core i3-8100 for two reasons: First, at the current asking price of $ 130, that doesn't make sense because the Ryzen 3 2200G that has become our preferred choice is better value at $ 100. Intel budget line when This did not do it for us and this happened even before the 14nm shortfall.

In the past, we preferred Intel's budget offerings rather than AMD. We like the Pentium G4560 and can't stop talking about it. A few years earlier we were raving about the value of the Core i5-6600K, compared to the AMD FX junk that was peddling, the Skylake quad-core parts were a little fine.

But in 2018, $ 64 dual-core like the G4560 won't even get the gamer out of bed again. Not when the Ryzen 5 2600 6-core / 12-thread can be owned for $ 160 and even if you don't have that much money, the quad-core Ryzen 3 2200G is also a bit special at $ 100 and of course the right choice for budget builders. Thank you for the great value that is often included in the list of the 5 best CPU sellers on Amazon.

The Best Entry Level Gaming CPU Athlon 200GE VS Pentium G5400

Then even less we have Athlon 200GE, the price is 40% cheaper with only $ 60 but I have to say it's not enough to give us a hiss like a pure quad-core 2200G. 200GE is dual-core with SMT, Chromebook is locked and equipped with small piddly coolers, but again the price is also only $ 60, almost half of Intel's Pentium branded CPU, G5400 which currently sells for $ 110. For direct cost comparison , I have to use the Celeron G4920, dual-core 3.2 GHz with 2MB L3 cache and that part is almost certain to be destroyed by Athlon 200GE.

So what I want to know is, if you have a very tight budget, should you buy an Athlon 200GE? This is really the only sub-$ 100 option now and frankly while the Pentium G5400 is included for comparison, the price requested at this time which is more expensive than the 2200G Ryzen 3 means it is basically a dead product.

If you are a gamer using a discrete graphics card, should you save every last dollar and use 200GE? Maybe then upgrade to something better in the future, something like Ryzen 5 2600, or should you spend less now and land the 2200G? Only $ 40 more, but will you see a lot of performance improvements? Well, let's find out.

The Athlon 200GE has been tested with dual-channel DDR4-2666 CL16 memory, Pentium G5400 with dual-channel DDR4-2400 CL16 memory and Ryzen 3 2200G with DDR4-3200 CL16 memory. Only quickly, for those who are not aware of the reasons for the different memory speeds down to what the CPU supports.

200GE can only run DDR4 memory up to 2666 specifications while the Pentium processor is limited to 2400 memory on locked motherboards such as H370 for example. Ryzen 3 2200G has no memory limit, at least none of which is imposed by anything other than the memory controller's own capabilities. Usually they work well with 3200 memory and we recommend using at least 3000 spec memory with this APU.

We used RTX 2080 Ti for this test and yes, we know this is an unrealistic GPU, but I want to be able to directly compare the data with the higher end CPU that I have tested and frankly it makes no difference. Of course the whole test point and comparing this CPU is to test CPU performance, not low-end GPU performance, if you understand this and are happy with it, let's continue

Benchmark

First of all we have Assassin's Creed Odyssey and become a CPU-demanding title that we find very limited CPU results with this entry level CPU. Because of this, the results of 1080p, 1440p, and 4K are all identical, so let's discuss the 1080p number.

The Pentium G5400 is clearly much faster than the Athlon 200GE because it allows 18% more performance and at the 60 fps frame rate below is a very big and real difference. However, the 2200G is 20% faster so that on average 48 fps and that is again a very large and very real performance improvement. The 2200G is also 41% faster than 200GE, so in my opinion it's worth spending an extra $ 40 to get a real quad-core CPU

Moving on to Assassin's Creed Origins gives us a slightly different margin, here the 2200G offers significantly better performance than dual-core processors, 55% performance over 200GE and at least 40% more than G5400, although the margin doesn't expand to 55% at 4K resolution.

The dual-core SMT allows 200GE and the G5400 to really struggle with this title and is only able to provide playable performance. The 2200G performance really is a better world because the frame rate knocks at the door 60 fps.

Forza Horizon 4 isn’t a CPU intensive game and as you can see even the Athlon 200GE enables a great gaming experience in this title. The Pentium G5400 was a little faster and then the 2200G a little faster again but overall a similar experience with all three CPUs.

There are still reasons why you might choose Athlon 200GE above the G5400, assuming the same price, you definitely go with AMD processors on the market today because the price is almost half. But even if both sell for around $ 60 you might still buy 200GE because this package has better integrated graphics even though you won't use it with a discrete graphics card.

You might be captivated by the superior platform on the AMD side too. The entry-level B350 and B450 motherboards that can support Ryzen 7 2700X without problems cost $ 60. Meanwhile you are looking for $ 70 for an Intel B360 or $ 100 board for a basic Z370 board, both of which are likely to strangle Intel 6 or 8 high-end cores. . Whereas next year the B350, B450 or other AM4 boards will support 7nm Zen2, so it's more than a little good.

At the end of the day for anyone with a budget large enough to include a kind of discrete graphics card, I won't even bother with Athlon 200GE. This is a great type of general computing product, very good for web browsing systems for parents, but that's all. We imagine almost everyone who reads this will get better in the world spending $ 40 more to get the Ryzen 3 2200G, it's far more capable so there's no reason to consider 200GE.

Something that I didn't touch but we have discussed several times in the past is the overclocking potential of the 2200G, there is more free performance to be had. This really is the best entry level CPU currently available and spending less than $ 100 for something else doesn't save you money.

The Best Entry Level Gaming CPU Athlon 200GE VS Pentium G5400

berga tech November 21, 2018

Benchmark

Also Read More :