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AMD Ryzen 5 2400G & Ryzen 3 2200G Review

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
It wasn’t all that long ago that the term AMD-coined term of “APU” or Accelerated Processing Unit generated more eye rolls than excitement. Originally introduced with the Llano architecture and evolved through subsequent generations, the overlying goal behind these processors was to offer good x86 performance alongside class-leading graphics capabilities.

The idea is somewhat novel even today since by and large Intel competitors have failed to deliver on the graphics part of that equation. There have been some notable exceptions like processors equipped with Intel’s Iris Pro like the rare and impressive i7-5775R but those have been exceptions rather than the rule.

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With the success and real competitiveness of AMD’s Zen microarchitecture, it was naturally time for them to take another kick at the APU can. But unlike the past when AMD’s underlying x86 processor technology struggled to keep up with Intel, this time things will likely be different. Ryzen processors have proven to be Intel’s match and the Vega graphics –though somewhat limited in scope right now- is being drawn upon to provide a significant bump in GPU capabilities. The end result is what AMD calls Raven Ridge, a new generation of processors that may finally bring the dream of APU success to reality.

By this point Raven Ridge and the APUs within its stable shouldn’t be news to you. We’ve actually covered them extensively through written content and numerous introductory videos. But let’s go through a quick refresher since now that launch is upon us, some new information is available that will probably affect (both in a positive and negative way) the buying public’s perception.

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I’m starting things off by stating the obvious: by their very nature, APUs aren’t meant for nor targeted at enthusiasts or well-to-do gamers. Indeed, the two products being launched –the $169 Ryzen 5 2400G and $99 Ryzen 3 2200G- are being parachuted into the lower end of AMD’s current processor lineup. They’re meant primarily as solutions for All-In-One desktops and entry level towers where discrete GPUs are more of a luxury than a necessity. Meanwhile the low voltage mobile offshoots will definitely be compelling for system integrators’ notebook designs.

But that doesn’t mean Raven Ridge doesn’t provide a potential avenue for entry level users who may want to go through system building in several steps. Basically they can now buy an APU that has respectable integrated graphics capabilities and play a waiting game in the hope that discrete GPU prices will eventually return to normalcy. This could be a key differentiator for the 2400G and 2200G, not to mention their fully unlocked nature encourages overclocking.

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Unlike past APU launches, Raven Ridge processors won’t be lumped into their own unique lineup. Instead, the 2400G and 2200G will be shoehorned into AMD’s already-full Ryzen desktop segment sporting the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 monikers respectively. This end of the market was pretty cluttered with products but AMD is making a move to clear things up by pushing the Ryzen 5 1400 and Ryzen 3 1200 to End of Life status. Essentially, they’ll be replaced by the new APUs.

Personally, I think this is a good move since it won’t remove much in the way of choices and it adds some much-needed clarity to a somewhat confusing product stack. The 4-core, 8- thread Ryzen 5 1500X is still around at $174 while the Ryzen 3 1300X offers good value in the sub-$150 market. The only real sacrifice will be a lack of non-APU options in the $99 to $129 bracket but as you’ll see below, that $99 2200G is a pretty tempting option for budget-minded buyers.

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With that in mind, let’s get into the specs of these two APUs. From a high level standpoint don’t think their 2000-series nomenclature means the upcoming Zen+ or Zen 2 microarchitectures are being used. Rather, Raven Ridge still uses first generation Zen but with a few key differentiators, some of which target a lower cost while others focus on adding a bit more efficiency. Think of this as “Zen 1.25”.

First and foremost, performance was addressed by using an updated 14nm+ manufacturing process to boost achievable core frequencies. Cache and internal memory latencies were also reduced and a new CPU package has even allowed for higher achievable memory speeds with both APUs now officially supporting up to 2933MHz dual channel kits.

But going hand in hand with those improvements are decisions that lowered pricing and could also adversely affect performance. Instead of using a dual 2+2 CCX design for these quad core chips, AMD is using a simplified 4+0 layout. The performance impact of this move is supposedly negligible but eliminating one of the Compute Complexes means half the shared L3 cache goes up in smoke as well. The design’s newly reduced latencies and higher core clocks should somewhat offset this loss.

Perhaps the biggest loss and something the APUs share in common with Zen-based Athlon processors is the lack of 16 dedicated graphics lanes for discrete cards. Once again this was done to save die space, simplify manufacturing and push towards a lower pricing structure. Now granted today’s mid-range GPUs really don’t need a x16 link (in our testing even a GTX 1080 isn’t bottlenecked by a PCIe 3.0 x8 interface) but to optics of it are quite poor.

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It is also important to remember that like Athon processors and these new Raven Ridge APUs also share a common onboard I/O layout. That means the number of SATA and general purposed PCIe lanes has been reduced to two and four respectively in keeping with the mainstream market they’re servicing. This isn’t necessarily limiting either since the GP lanes could be directed to a single high speed NVMe SSD without sacrificing other storage or I/O capabilities.

Naturally these specifications make the 2400G and 2200G perfect companions for affordable B350 and A320 motherboards. X370 remains a possibility as well but I personally feel a lot of that platform’s most notable features like dual x16 GPU slots and multiple PCIe M.2 slots and would simply go to waste if it’s paired up with a Raven Ridge APU.

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The final piece of the Raven Ridge APU puzzle is of course the Vega-based graphics processors that are integrated into their die package and communicate over AMD’s Infinity Fabric interface. Code named Vega 11 and Vega 8 based on the number of Vega Compute Units which are enabled (in the same vein, Vega 64 and Vega 56 have 64 CUs and 56 CUs respectively), these are by far the fastest integrated GPUs that AMD has ever launched.

The Vega 11 has 704 Stream Processors, 16 ROPs and 44 Texture Units which puts it at about 1/5th as powerful as AMD’s own Vega 56. Now that might not sound like much but in the onboard graphics world, those are impressive specs. Plus, given the architectural improvements of Vega over the R7 generation used in Bristol Ridge, the difference will be like night and day.

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Meanwhile the Ryzen 3 2200G’s 8 CU layout leads to 512 SPs, 16 ROPs and 32 TMUs, a specification that’s identical to the previous generation’s R7. However, the improved 14nm manufacturing process and all the enhancements baked into Vega lead to an almost 70% generational performance boost. One other thing to mention is that Raven Ridge APUs won’t have the Dual Graphics support of its forefathers since there just aren’t any lower end Vega-based cards to pair up with.

With all of this being said, both the Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G look like very, very promising CPUs even without their integrated Radeon graphics figured into the equation. Not only do they look like suitable replacements for the outgoing Ryzen 5 1400 and Ryzen 3 1200 but they could also prove to be quite timely for buyers who want an upgrade but can’t stomach current discrete GPU prices.

But the question remains: with lower L3 cache and a truncated PCIe interface has AMD shaved off more than necessary in an effort to cut costs? Or, when compared to Intel’s Coffee Lake architecture and the now seemingly overpriced $185 i5-8400 and its ilk, can Raven Ridge hold its own in key x86 performance areas? Let’s find out.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Test Setups & Methodology

Test Setups & Methodology


For this review, we have prepared a number of different test setups, representing many of the popular platforms at the moment. As much as possible, the test setups feature identical components, memory timings, drivers, etc. Aside from manually selecting memory frequencies and timings, every option in the BIOS was at its default setting.

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For all of the benchmarks, appropriate lengths are taken to ensure an equal comparison through methodical setup, installation, and testing. The following outlines our testing methodology:

A) Windows is installed using a full format.

B) Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed.

C)To ensure consistent results, a few tweaks are applied to Windows 10 (v1709) and the NVIDIA control panel:
  • UAC – Disabled
  • Windows HPET – Disabled
  • Indexing – Disabled
  • Superfetch – Disabled
  • System Protection/Restore – Disabled
  • Problem & Error Reporting – Disabled
  • Remote Desktop/Assistance - Disabled
  • Windows Security Center Alerts – Disabled
  • Windows Defender – Disabled
  • Screensaver – Disabled
  • Power Plan – High Performance
  • V-Sync – Off
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
System Benchmarks: AIDA64

AIDA64 Extreme Edition


AIDA64 uses a suite of benchmarks to determine general performance and has quickly become one of the de facto standards among end users for component comparisons. While it may include a great many tests, we used it for general CPU testing (CPU ZLib / CPU Hash) and floating point benchmarks (FPU VP8 / FPU SinJulia).


CPU PhotoWorxx Benchmark
This benchmark performs different common tasks used during digital photo processing. It performs a number of modification tasks on a very large RGB image:

This benchmark stresses the SIMD integer arithmetic execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. CPU PhotoWorxx test uses the appropriate x87, MMX, MMX+, 3DNow!, 3DNow!+, SSE, SSE2, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4A, AVX, AVX2, and XOP instruction set extension and it is NUMA, HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.


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CPU ZLib Benchmark

This integer benchmark measures combined CPU and memory subsystem performance through the public ZLib compression library. CPU ZLib test uses only the basic x86 instructions but is nonetheless a good indicator of general system performance.

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CPU AES Benchmark

This benchmark measures CPU performance using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) data encryption. In cryptography AES is a symmetric-key encryption standard. AES is used in several compression tools today, like 7z, RAR, WinZip, and also in disk encryption solutions like BitLocker, FileVault (Mac OS X), TrueCrypt. CPU AES test uses the appropriate x86, MMX and SSE4.1 instructions, and it's hardware accelerated on Intel AES-NI instruction set extension capable processors. The test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.

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CPU Hash Benchmark

This benchmark measures CPU performance using the SHA1 hashing algorithm defined in the Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 180-3. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly. More importantly, it uses MMX, MMX+/SSE, SSE2, SSSE3, AVX instruction sets, allowing for increased performance on supporting processors.

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FPU VP8 / SinJulia Benchmarks

AIDA’s FPU VP8 benchmark measures video compression performance using the Google VP8 (WebM) video codec Version 0.9.5 and stresses the floating point unit. The test encodes 1280x720 resolution video frames in 1-pass mode at a bitrate of 8192 kbps with best quality settings. The content of the frames are then generated by the FPU Julia fractal module. The code behind this benchmark method utilizes MMX, SSE2 or SSSE3 instruction set extensions.

Meanwhile, SinJulia measures the extended precision (also known as 80-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of a single frame of a modified "Julia" fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and utilizes trigonometric and exponential x87 instructions.


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Performance in these first few tests is, quite frankly, all over the damn place. It seems like the 2400G's and 2200G's clock speeds are able to propel the APUs to the forefront, beating the 1300X and 1500X at times. But then workloads change and suddenly both processors find themselves languishing closer to the bottom of our charts.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
System Benchmarks: Cinebench / PCMark 8 / WPrime

CineBench R15 64-bit


The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R15 makes use of all your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

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PCMark 8


PCMark 8 is the latest iteration of Futuremark’s system benchmark franchise. It generates an overall score based upon system performance with all components being stressed in one way or another. The result is posted as a generalized score. In this case, we didn’t use the Accelerated benchmark but rather just used the standard Computational results which cut out OpenCL from the equation.

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WPrime


wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're squaring, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. This is a highly multi-threaded workload. Below are the scores for the 1024M benchmark.

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Unlike AIDA which picked up an odd tenancy where these APUs lacked consistent performance output, Cinebench PCMark and WPrime show the 2400G running even with the 1500X while the 2200G ends up competing quite well against the 1300X. These also look like excellent alternatives to the processors they end up replacing in the AMD lineup (the 1400 and 1200).
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Single Thread Performance

Single Thread Performance


Even though most modern applications have the capability to utilize more than one CPU thread, single threaded performance is still a cornerstone of modern CPU IPC improvements. In this section, we take a number of synthetic applications and run them in single thread mode.

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Due to their higher clock speeds, both Raven Ridge APUs are able to deliver a good bump in single thread performance versus the Ryzen 5 1400 and Ryzen 3 1200. They're still nowhere near to Coffee Lake or Kaby Lake but the gap is shrinking and it could be only a matter of time until upcoming Zen architectures can at least match Intel here.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Productivity Benchmarks: 7-Zip / Adobe Premier Pro

7-Zip


At face value, 7-Zip is a simple compression/decompresion tool like popular applications like WinZip and WinRAR but it also has numerous additional functions that can allow encryption, decryption and other options. For this test, we use the standard built-in benchmark which focuses on raw multi-threaded throughput.

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Adobe Premier Pro CC


Adobe Premier Pro CC is one of the most recognizable video editing programs on the market today as it is used by videography professionals and YouTubers alike. In this test we take elements of a 60-second 4K video file and render them out into a cohesive MP4 video via Adobe’s Media Encoder. Note that GPU acceleration is turned on.

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Moving on to the real world results and it looks like Raven Ridge is settling down into a bit of a pattern. In tests that see benefits from higher clock speeds or rely on other system components, the 2400G and 2200G are able to deliver pretty good results. However, Adobe Premier is known for its reliance on memory and to a lesser extent the cache subsystem so performance there isn't quite as impressive.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Productivity Benchmarks: Blender / 3ds MAX Corona

Blender


Blender is a free-to-use 3D content creation program that also features an extremely robust rendering back-end. It boasts extremely good multi core scaling and even incorporates a good amount of GPU acceleration for various higher level tasks. In this benchmark we take a custom 1440P 3D image and render it out using the built-in tool. The results you see below list how long it took each processor to complete the test.

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3ds MAX Corona Renderer


Autodesk’s 3ds MAX is currently one of the most-used 3D modeling, animation and rendering programs on the market, providing a creative platform for architects to industrial designers alike. Unfortunately its rendering algorithms leave much to be desired and third party rendering add-ons are quite popular. One of the newest ones is called Corona.

In this test we take a custom 3D scene of a room with global illumination enabled and render it out in 720P using Corona’s built-in renderer.


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Neither Blender nor the Corona plugin for 3DS Max seem to penalize Raven Ridge for its lower L3 cache, or AMD's mitigation steps are showing their teeth here. Nonetheless, the 2400G and 2200G are able to once again hang tight with the 1500X / 1300X while offering much better performance than the processors they replace.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Productivity Benchmarks: GIMP / Handbrake

GIMP


While it may be open source, GIMP is actually one of the most popular free photo editors available right now. It uses both CPU and GPU acceleration for certain tasks. In this test we use an 8K image and use a script to run eight different filters in succession. This is considered a lightly threaded workload since the memory, CPU and storage drive can all play a role in performance.

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Handbrake


Video conversion from one format to another is a stressful task for any processor and speed is paramount. Handbrake is one of the more popular transcoders on the market since it is free, has a long feature list, supports GPU acceleration and has an easy-to-understand interface. In this test we take a 6GB 4K MP4 and convert it to a 1080P MKV file with a H.264 container format. GPU acceleration has been disabled. The results posted indicate how long it took for the conversion to complete.

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GIMP is a primarily lightly threaded program so it is a bit odd that the benefits we saw in Cinebench and WPrime's single threaded benchmarks aren't being translated here. Moving on to Handbrake and the 2400G continues to offer up performance that's similar to the 1500X but the 2200G starts falling behind the 1300X.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Productivity Benchmarks: POV Ray / WinRAR

POV Ray 3.7


POV Ray is a complex yet simple to use freeware ray tracing program which has the ability to efficiently use multiple CPU cores in order to speed up rendering output. For this test, we use its built-in benchmark feature which renders a high definition scene. The rendering time to completion is logged and then listed below.

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WinRAR


WinRAR is one of those free tools that everyone seems to use. Its compression and decompression algorithms are fully multi-core aware which allows for a significant speedup when processing files. In this test we compress a 3GB folder of various files and add a 256-bit encryption key. Once again the number listed is the time to completion.

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Let's talk about those 2200G POV Ray results for a moment. At first I thought there was something wrong with the benchmark or my calculations but after running the test a half dozen times with the same results, the 2200G performed terribly on a consistent basis. I think a bit more analysis is warranted but unfortunately that's outside the scope of this particular review.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Gaming Performance (Synthetic)

3DMark Fire Strike (DX11)


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3DMark Time Spy (DX12)


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Moving on to gaming and the Raven Ridge APUs land exactly where they were supposed to. More importantly, it looks like their x8 graphics capabilities aren't holding back the TITAN X by and perceptible amount.
 
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