AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G Review - Affordable and Capable CPUs for 2018!

Ryzen surprised us last year by offering CPUs that are finally competitive to Intel’s offerings! Gamers rejoiced everywhere that we have a competition again!

AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G

Despite the celebration of the returned competition, Ryzen left out one key market, office PCs that don't need GPUs.

They waited a year before releasing the APUs which are CPUs with integrated Radeon graphics to greatly increase GPU power. They hope to create the budget CPU without the need for graphics for those who don’t really need it, or for those who are on a tight budget.

The APUs we will be looking at in this review are the Ryzen R3 2200G and R5 2400G which supersedes the R3 1200 and R5 1400, respectively. But what kind of performance can you expect from AMD’s APU?

Read on to find out.

AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G Specs

Device	AMD Ryzen 3 2200G	Ryzen 5 2400G
Base Clock	3.5GHz	3.6GHz
Number of CPU Cores/Threads	4-cores/4 threads	4-cores/8 threads
Cache L1/L2/L3	384KB/2MB/4MB	384KB/2MB/4MB
Socket	AM4	AM4
Max Boost Clock	3.7GHz	3.9GHz
GPU	RX Vega Graphics 8	RX Vega Graphics 11
Number of GPU Cores	8	11
Default TDP	65W	65W
Price	PHP 5,990	PHP 9,300

Unboxing

The box

Inside both boxes are the APU, manuals, and Wraith Stealth cooler. The cooler has a pre-applied thermal paste.

Right off the bat, we can see that the two Ryzen APUs are similar except for the number of GPU cores, clock speeds, and simultaneous multithreading of the R5. Both have the Wraith stealth cooler which is good enough for normal use but was not able cool when we tried to overclock.

Build Quality

The intricate but solid and refined build quality of both processor and stock fan!

Both the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G are similar in build with solid and high quality materials given the price. Compared to Intel counterparts, the build quality from both brands aren't too far apart.

This is what it looks like on a compatible motherboard!

Each part like the board, metal housing and the pins feel solid and refined. You can't go wrong.

Performance

The Ryzen 3 2200G performed admirably and offers value for money given that when compared to competing Intel i3 8100 was near negligible. The i3 8100 was only 5 percent faster in single core score and almost the same in multicore score in UserBenchmark.

While the Ryzen 5 2400G underperformed against the Intel i5 8400 by a 14 percent margin in single core score and a large 32 percent multicore score also from UserBenchmark.

This is consistent with our home made benchmarks.

The following benchmarks were taken with the following hardware:

CPU: R3 2200G and R5 2400G (Wraith stealth cooler)

RAM: G-SKILL 2x8GB DDR4 @ 3200Mhz

HDD: WD Blue 1TB 7200RPM

MB: Asus Crosshair Hero VII X470

Blender benchmarks

PCMark 8 and 10 benchmarks

CineBench and Geekbench benchmarks

As we can see in the table above, the Ryzen 5 increased the most in the Cinebench CPU and Blender tests which fully utilized multithreading. The R5 did have slightly decreased scores in single core Geekbench scores but is within margin of error. Overall, the R5 is around 19.04 percent more powerful than the Ryzen 3.

The Ryzen 3 however is a better value for users looking to buy either a 2200G or an Intel i3 8100.

Below are benchmarks focused on gaming and utilizes the integrated GPU.

3DMark and other video games

The two APUs can power low settings at the games tested. It should be able to handle other e-sports games at 60 fps and can support more taxing games at 30 fps. Not the best gaming performance, but respectable for the price. Overall the gaming performance of the R5 is better than R3 by 13.15 percent. 

We did try to overclock the two Ryzen APUs. However, we only had the Wraith Stealth cooler which did not let us go very far. We were able to overclock the Ryzen 3 2200G by 8 percent and the Ryzen 5 2400G by 5 percent. Any further and we were experiencing thermal issues. If you plan on overclocking, get a better cooler, especially for the R3 2200G which benefited more from overclocking. 

Pros - Ryzen 3 and 5 are more affordable, Solid Build Quality, Benchmarks for the Ryzen 3 are better than competing Intel's 8100 with nearly the same price, Cooling is sufficient unless you will overclock 

Cons - Ryzen 5 benchmarks are lower than Intel's i5 8400 even though they are nearly priced the same

Verdict 

A common question that comes up is if it’s better to get the APUs rather than the 1st Gen Ryzen CPUs when using a discrete GPU for both. From what we have researched online, they have similar performances when clocked the same.

However, the APUs are clocked higher out of the box and seem to be better stocked right now. Thus we do recommend getting the APU instead of their 1st gen counterparts even when using a GPU. The main difference seems to be that the 1st gen Ryzen has more cache which is better for some CPU based workloads but is not important for gaming.

Overall, the two Ryzen APUs do offer good value and is decent for 3D workloads like gaming. It should be enough for internet cafes and offices. They are great options for gamers on a budget as well given that aside from the better prized Ryzens, the compatible motherboards are also more affordable.