AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Review: Zen, Meet Vega

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You're missing the use case of people who don't play stuff like GTA.

Minecraft will run about 80fps on an i7-6770HQ. It'll probably do a lot better on this chip. Ditto lower-requirement games like WoW, Guild Wars 2, or Stardew Valley, etc., etc. And you've still got the 8 threads for, I dunno, keeping 50 Chrome tabs open or running Handbrake.

 
I would have definitely liked to have seen some other Ryzen processors in these benchmarks, at least the 1400 and 1500X for this review, to see whether the architectural changes had any notable effects on performance.

Also, why not test the Ryzen 2400G with a GT 1030 as well, to get a more accurate indication of how the built-in graphics compare to that card?

Perhaps testing with 8GB of RAM might have been useful too, since RAM is rather expensive right now, and someone building a system with one of these for low-budget gaming probably isn't going to put close to $200 worth of RAM into it. With only 8GB, having some of that dedicated to the graphics system could potentially cause a hit to performance in certain games.
 
I'd like to see a little more information on memory. When Ryzen first came out, memory support at higher speeds was very specific, with DDR4-2667 only working out of the box on single-rank memory modules. I didn't want to overclock so I spent several hours reading through forums, supported memory lists, and product specifications until I finally settled on a pair of compatible DRAM modules. What about these new Raven Ridge parts? Without overclocking, will they work with dual-rank memory at DDR-2933 speeds?

Also, this is less important, but I'd be curious to see some benchmarks against some higher-end Ryzen models. It might have fewer course, less cache, and a slightly lower turbo clock speed than the Ryzen 1600X, but with faster memory, better turbo boost technology, and lower cache latency when all 4 cores access the same cache, I'd think it could pull ahead of the 1600X in some situations.
 

I wouldn't doubt if AMD were to release something like a 2300G later on, though it seems more likely that it might have all of the graphics cores active rather than SMT enabled.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were to add a 2500G as well, with higher clocks out of the box and their 95w cooler like the 1500X currently has. Another possible product they could launch would be a 2 core / 4 thread model at a lower price, to compete more directly with Intel's Pentium processors in the sub-$100 range. They'll likely end up with a stockpile of these chips that have a defective core or two that they could use for that purpose.

They are supposedly going to launch alternate versions of the 2200G and 2400G, but apparently those will simply be lower-clocked 35 watt versions for use in low-power applications.
 
Really like the 2400G. I'm not so concerned about having the highest settings enabled. If my i7-3770K wasn't still running strong, and I hadn't recently picked up a GTX 1060, I'd be tempted.Especially because you could get the 2400G and a decent motherboard for what a GTX 1060 is supposed to cost. That's not taking account the price hike caused by the shortage either.

If AMD keeps going this way, I really think my next system will be based on an AMD CPU. Just not for a few more years.
 
Non-metallic TIM I like this and what has Intel been using for a good long while now?
This is a poor mans chip as stated by others if this is all that you can afford then its better then nothing. Not everyone has the funds to plunk down 100o bucks for a gpu and if you just noticed GPUS are out of this world on prices even used 2 and 3 and 4th generation gpus on ebay command a higher price then they should. Kudos to AMD and Kudos to Intel for using AMDS gpus in there chips in the future.
 
Of course, existing boards need a firmware update to recognize the new models, while newer platforms will include a "Ryzen Desktop 2000 Ready" badge signaling drop-in compatibility.
Click to expand...
So I have a question: If people on the forums are looking to buy one of these today (or over the next few days), how do we find cheap boards that we *know* will support these CPUs out-of-the box. As far as I can tell neither Amazon nor Newegg have filters to limit lists to 2000 series ready boards only. PCpartpicker doesn't list the 2200G/2400G yet and I wouldn't want to 100% trust their compatibility flag anyway. I've just spent 10 minutes browsing through Newegg & Amazon AM4 boards and I haven't stumbled across any that claim 2000 series compatibility.

CPUs are for sale and can be purchased right now. But compatible boards? Am I missing something?
 


You won't. Only the 400 series MB (presumably A420/B450/X470) will support these Ryzen 2 out-of-the-box. The 300 series will need BIOS update, and because they're all AM4 socket, you'll never know if the cheap B350 you're looking at is being sold at a decent enough pace to cycle through its stock to the point that the BIOS on the MB is the version with Ryzen 2 support or if the model had terrible sale and the manufacturer decides to stop its production to focus on the 400 variant and therefore all its stock are of the old BIOS.
 
since it has only 8 Pci lanes, is it still possible to use a low-level card through a pcie x16 slot?
P S
i am new at this
 
Thank you for your work Paul. As usual a very good review.

But the thing is that I really can't accept the so called "CONS" .

In this situation it just seems to me like somebody else has written them or that maybe you were very tired or something :)

1) Eight lanes for PCIe slots

This is a very valid "CON" and I fully agree .

2) Need to ensure motherboard BIOS compatibility

This is nonsense. Of course you need to ensure BIOS compatibility. When the hell weren't we supposed to do this ?! How is this a "CON" ?!

It's like saying "you need to plug it in" . Well of course we do ! WTF ?! :)

3) Non-metallic TIM

This is a very valid "CON" and I fully agree .

4) Requires a better heatsink for overclocking

WTF ?! Really ?! :) Like when the heck does a CPU not need a better cooling system to overclock ?!

We get a free heat-sink and we're free to swap it for whatever we want, if we want good overclocking results.

How would this be a "CON" ?!

I feel like I flew back in time and landed in the country of Anandtech saying "Of course AMD's R290 beats nVIDIA's Titan for less than half the price, but we can't recommend it .... because it's noisy " :)

For what it's worth, this is how absurd these 2 "CONS" look for me ... you need to make sure your BIOS is up to date and get a better heatsink for overclocking ...

Next we're going to put "needs to be plugged in" and "uses electrical current" in the "CON" category :)
 
This is a very nice review and time constraints would cause it to be somewhat limited, but for the incoming test it would be nice to have:

  • ■ how the APU handles 2666 memory (for a real "el cheapo" rig, or to see if this is a worthwhile upgrade path for those who went with Ryzen at the beginning)
    ■ how the CPU works with a Geforce 1030 to really compare the RAM impact of the GPU on pure CPU tasks (to see whether or not the GPU really is bottlenecking the CPU in games)
    ■ for the extra crazy setup, try these chips with a 1080ti SLI to see how they scale clock for clock with other quad core CPUs and how much the absence of 8 PCIe lanes can be felt on such a rig (my bet is, the CPU isn't powerful enough to drive the cards at their top speeds, making the PCIe bottleneck pretty much irrelevant)

Not that I'll get one of these chips for me any time soon, but they would do very well in "multimedia PC" environments my friends regularly ask me about. The 45W option would also make it great in a living room PC.

As for the "no TIM" problem, not only does AMD seem to have used a slightly better thermal paste than Intel, but de-lidding is also now possible.
 
As of now AMD has this solidly with no direct or matching product competiton on Intel side.

IMO, for now, this is the only good choice for those who are on a very tight budget and just wanted to buy a rig where they can play games with the settings set enough to enjoy the game's "eye candy" features,.. and since this also on a vega, with this 2400G, 4C/8T ryzen 5 proc. matched with 11Cu and 704 SPs Vega chip its performance is also a good choice for those who are into full HD video edting as well, just add 16gb of ram, an ssd, and an affordable full hd monitor and there ya go, no seperate gpu needed, good for itx small box casing setup that is very affordable. Good revenue for AMD targeting people on a very tight budge eh.


In additon:
2400G is overclockable too. Its nice ??
 
I'm seeing a lot of comments from people with unrealistic expectations.

For one, this is a CPU with integrated graphics that compare with discrete cards, specifically the RX550 and GT 1030, for the same price as their just CPU AMD counterparts. This means that for no graphics card cost, you can build an e-sports gaming machine.

That the APU is capable at all of claiming 1080p playable performance in AAA titles is unheard of for integrated graphics, and is even a questionable claim on low end discrete cards. Let alone its ability to actually back that claim up in a lot of titles.

However, AAA gaming is just the icing on the cake. Most people building with this will be playing things like Rocket League, CS GO, Fortnight, and PUBG, as well as possibly older AAA games that are at a reasonable price. It isn't going to be the kind of machine that someone with money to drop on $50-$60 games is going to have. In that respect, this APU provides considerable value.

Instead of building a system with an R3 1200, GT 1030, 8GB DDR4, etc... you can use an APU, get faster RAM or more RAM (or more and faster) since you are not paying for a discrete GT 1030, and have a more capable system for when you can afford the much higher spec GPU to drop into it. Plus you have an upgrade path to up to a Ryzen 7 in the future on a socket that has claimed support until 2020.

We are talking about playing pretty demanding games right out of the box here! If you bought an Intel CPU and couldn't afford a discrete graphics card there are quite a few popular games that you just couldn't play, or you would have to play at settings so low that it wouldn't even be enjoyable.

As for the question about the overclocking and not using the stock cooler, not only are you cooling the CPU cores, but also the Vega cores. At stock settings the Wraith Stealth is a very capable cooler, it might even be able to handle the CPU overclock, but when you add the Vega cores overclock to it, it isn't hard to imagine that it can overwhelm the stock cooler. Now, if you had a Wraith Spire you might be fine, but the Stealth just isn't enough for all of that. If I were overclocking one, I'd have an aftermarket cooler.
 


Right now, it's only a problem if you pair it with the Titan V.



I'd say that that's for the people who went in and expect to follow AMD own slide of OCing to achieve same or better performance to a GT1030 with the assumption that the included cooler (which performed quite well for OCing the first gen R3/R5, and did a respectable job cooling moderately OCed R7) would be enough for that.

Some people may not realize while the Wraith Stealth can do 4Ghz for quad-cores Zen, it can't quite do 4Ghz 4cores Zen AND 1.6Ghz 8-11 Vega CU. To be fair, the AMD slide only show internal test of OCed 1.6Ghz iGPU+3600Mhz DDR4 and not OCed 4cores Zen as well, but this is the internet where people are already clamoring about the great hypothetical out-of-the-box performance of OCed Zen cores AND OCed Vega cores -with a little tweak-.

Therefore I can see that CON being there so that people who skipped the article to look at just the conclusion to understand that this time, the AMD included cooling solution is not up to snuff if one were to want/need to OC both components of this APU.


>>There are already some test results showing an almost 30% performance drop when the 2400G is paired with Dual-channel 2133 and 20% drop with Dual-channel 2400 vs the 3200 kit in these test. Single channel would hamper it even more with Single-channel 3200 resulting ~35% drop, and the worst Single-channel 2133 resulting in >50% drop.

>>The quad cores Zen can and should hold its own when paired with anything from the GTX1070 or lower.

>>The 2400G only has 8 PCIe lanes, it cannot do SLI. Plus there are already some test that shows the Titan V can be relatively hampered by a 8xPCIe 3.0 lanes, but that was on a 8700k, I believe. And as mentioned above, quad cores Zen beginning to show weakness with the GTX1070, so yes, the CPU performance would be the bottleneck long before the PCIe lanes.
 


2.) See Rhysiam's comment above yours to understand the mobo "con." If you buy a motherboard and it does not have the new BIOS, how do you flash it to the new BIOS without another Ryzen chip? (less expensive boards don't have out-of-band BIOS update). It's not a dealbreaker imo, just takes a bit more research, but it is not an ideal situation, either.

4.) Most Ryzen models have coolers that do allow overclocking to some extent, so this is a bit of a change from the norm.

 


Holy crap, dude, you REALLY need to read your post out loud to the mirror and hear how crazy it sounds.
 
@PaulyAlcorn

I'm not sure why you need GT 1030 on every Intel CPU in this benchmark.

To my understanding: Every Intel CPU since first gen Intel Core Micro Architecture have its own built-in GPU.

Are you doing this so Intel still looks like it has some kinda lead over AMD?
 
How on earth is this even considered a reasonable test setup? You give the Ryzen chips 3200 frequency RAM? An $80 cooler? That's the same price as the CPU! The Ram cost is triple the price.

Surely you just use the same RAM in all the systems?

Then you compare the results with a geforce 1030 and claim the APU did well?

Why not stick the 1050, 960, or 750ti cards in? You can get those at sub $100 at times.

Anyway, it seems like this 'Editor's choice' was predetermined and simply justified with bad setup and comparisons.

The NVMe, RAM, Cooler, and Motherboard, for a 'value based system' are all crazy choices that don't reflect realistic consumer choices when buying a 90 dollar CPU.
 

They're putting a GT1030 in Intel builds because HD 630 is completely hopeless, not worth making comparisons with as it is dead last with less than half the scores in all graphics benches even when given a much stronger CPU, and the GT1030 is the cheapest or second cheapest current-generation GPU money can buy.

i3-8100 + GT1030 gives you the closest equivalent to the 2200G CPU-wise without getting hamstrung by the IGP.
i3-8400 + GT1030 gives you the high watermark of what the GT1030 should be capable of when the CPU clearly isn't the bottleneck

If you want to know where the 2200G and 2400G sit in the performance hierarchy in both CPU and GPU/IGP terms, you need to have nearby references to compare it to. As others have already pointed out, I wish they'd also done 2200G/2400G + GT1030 to see how much better Raven Ridge performs when the IGP is disabled.
 
I think it is not fair to include the cost of the graphics card in the intel ($ 89) and not include in Amd the extra cost of the memories to 3200 compared to the 2400/2666 (approximately $ 60).
 
I'm seeing only about a $20 difference between DDR4-2666 vs DDR4-3200 for G.Skill Ripjaws V (on NewEgg.com, seller NewEgg, new RAM only, not used or refurbished).

Of course, while Intel doesn't get as much benefit from faster RAM as AMD does, had they gone with cheaper, slower RAM for the Intel platform, the test could have (and probably would have) gotten complaints about how Tom's Hardware unfairly crippled the Intel systems with slower RAM.
 
I think it is not fair to include the cost of the graphics card in the intel ($ 89) and not include in Amd the extra cost of the memories to 3200 compared to the 2400/2666 (approximately $ 60).
 

The "AMD Ryzen Desktop 2000 Ready" stickers are what should differentiate the 300 series boards that have updated BIOSes. If you were buying your motherboard in a store, it should be as simple as looking at the front of the box, assuming the store has stock available with updated firmware. Online, it might be less clear right now, though I suspect retailers may start listing boards as "2000 Ready" relatively soon. This CPU just came out, so it's perhaps not the best choice quite yet for someone building a system at home who doesn't have access to another Ryzen processor, but that should change before long. And of course, 400 series motherboards should also be coming within the next couple months.


Yeah, I haven't seen benchmarks yet, but it would make sense that graphics performance should take a hit from lower-performance memory. The same can happen with Intel's integrated graphics, where using slower, single-channel memory can cause a significant hit to graphics performance. On the other hand, there's little reason why anyone should pair a 2400G or 2200G with slower RAM. Going with a faster dual-channel kit for a new system doesn't exactly cost that much more. A 2x4GB set of DDR4 3200 typically only costs around $10 to $15 more than DDR4 2133. And if someone already has a system with slower DDR4 that they're looking to upgrade, it would have to be on a relatively recent motherboard that has decent processor upgrade options available, so it probably wouldn't make much sense for them to invest in a new motherboard for one of these processors. Those building a new system with one of these CPUs might just want to make sure they don't cheap out too much on the quality of their RAM.
 
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