Amd athlon 220ge review: AMD Athlon 240GE and 220GE Review: Retaking the Low Ground — Tom’s Hardware

The Athlon 240GE processor showed a good overclocking result, adding 450 MHz to the nominal frequency. At the same time, the temperature in the load was 59 degrees Celsius, and the peak power consumption was 49 watts.

The Athlon 220GE processor showed the best overclocking result, adding 625 MHz to the nominal frequency. At the same time, the temperature in the load was 63 degrees Celsius, and the peak power consumption was 51 watts.

The Athlon 200GE processor showed the third result in absolute frequency, despite the fact that it added 675 MHz to the nominal frequency. At the same time, the temperature in the load was 60 degrees Celsius, and the peak power consumption was 50 watts.

Comprehensive performance

Having finished our overclocking experiments, we evaluated the performance of all three Athlon 240GE, Athlon 220GE and Athlon 200GE processors in a number of complex benchmarks and applications. The most successful Athlon 220GE, which was able to overclock to 4025 MHz, also participated in the performance assessment as the best solution in terms of speed.

The performance of all three Athlon 240GE, Athlon 220GE, and Athlon 200GE processors was proportional to the level of CPU clock speeds in many tasks. It is not possible to single out the best here, since all three models show a level of performance close to each other. Athlon 220GE overclocked to 4025 MHz stands apart from them, but its results should be taken into account as out of the standings.

Gaming performance

Another interesting issue was the possibility of using the Athlon 240GE, Athlon 220GE and Athlon 200GE processes for games with a discrete graphics card. For these purposes, we added an MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming X graphics adapter to our test bench. Tests in the games we selected were carried out at ultra settings at a resolution of 1280 * 720 pixels. The Athlon 240GE processor was used as the base model, and the Athlon 220GE overclocked to 4025 MHz became its opponent.

The difference of 525 MHz in the operating clock frequency of the same processors had a strong effect on the average number of frames per second. This indicates that it was the processors in gaming tasks that acted as a bottleneck in the system, and a video card of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti level for such CPUs is a redundant and unbalanced solution.

Conclusion

The AMD Athlon 240GE, Athlon 220GE , and Athlon 200GE processors hit the market at what seems to be the best time for them. While the CPU market continues to storm from a partial shortage of Intel processors, a direct competitor releases retail solutions that are quite affordable, and most importantly, decent in terms of performance. The price grid of $75, $65 and $55 for Athlon 240GE, Athlon 220GE and Athlon 200GE, respectively, strengthens AMD’s position in the budget segment from the start of sales. The presence of two fast Zen cores with SMT multi-threading technology and the presence of an integrated Vega 3 video core make these processors the best choice for budget users. The models Athlon 240GE, Athlon 220GE and Athlon 200GE may also receive due demand as an object for assembling office PCs. From the point of view of upgrading such systems, the Athlon 240GE, Athlon 220GE and Athlon 200GE processors should also not be a stumbling block. Since they are intended for the AMD AM4 platform, which, as you know, promises to be a long-term player in the market.

Pros:

• affordable price and flexible model selection;
• good performance for a budget solution;
• processing of 4 computational threads simultaneously;
• the presence of the Vega 3 video core;
• low TDP at 35W;
• cooling system included.

Cons:

• total 12 PCIe lanes.

AMD Athlon 200GE, 220GE, and 240GE Budget Processor Express Test

Methodology for testing computer systems of the sample of 2017

Testing budget processors AMD Athlon and Intel Celeron and Pentium in comparison with A-series APUs, Core i3 and Ryzen 3

Until the fall of last year, the AMD AM4 platform managed almost without budget solutions — or rather, the positions of those were occupied by the «old» APUs of the Bristol Ridge family, released back in 2016 based on the mid-decade microarchitecture. They coped with their tasks in an average way, so as soon as the company «reached its hands» in this segment, the Athlon 200GE entered the market, which we met in the fall. The model turned out to be very successful — there were not enough stars from the sky, but, having a performance at the level of the old A-series, it could boast of significantly lower power consumption and an extremely affordable price. Such a budget offer looked especially good against the background of Intel solutions in the corresponding segment. Not even because Intel’s GPUs in terms of 3D performance have not changed since 2015, and the Celeron processor component generally dates back to the past decade (the Pentium was redesigned in 2017, but the effect of this was already «mastered») — when finances come in, it rarely comes to technical features. In this case, too, Athlon 200GE was out of competition — it even officially cost less than the cheapest Pentium, and had no problems with deliveries, so real retail prices differed even more.

Literally at once the company also announced its desire to expand the Athlon family «upward» by releasing models with the 220GE and 240GE indices. But no one was specifically waiting for them — it was clear that with the «live» 200GE they could not claim the role of processors with the lowest price, and no significant changes were promised. Moreover, just at the end of the year, 200GE again became the hero of the news: it turned out that on some motherboards, when updating firmware to AGESA version 1.0. 14nm Ryzen. According to reviews, sometimes even a part of the PCIe interface was unlocked, i.e. 8 lines became available (like the Ryzen APU), and not the original four. True, this noise subsided just as quickly due to the practical insignificance of the discovery: now, if the processor cores were unlocked (as was the case with some Athlon and Phenom for AM3) … But pay extra for a suitable fee in some places (far from everywhere) catching up with the Ryzen 3 2200G in normal mode, remaining on the same old video core, with the same two cores and a maximum of DDR4-2666, is a completely different matter. Especially since it’s a size 9.0346 surcharge for the board is comparable to the difference in the price of processors, and if you still buy something on the B450, Ryzen, of course, overclocks just as well. At the same time, Ryzen are overclocked with great effect and officially, while AMD’s position on Athlon overclocking remains unchanged: as is . In general, they talked (in separate narrow circles) — and forgot.

Now it’s time to return to this line, fortunately, as promised, it has replenishment — models with indices 220GE and 240GE. Officially, they are slightly more expensive than the «ancestor» of the family, so as a solution to the «minimum price» they are slightly less interesting. But since the processors turned out to be in our hands, and it would be time to release the final test material, we decided to conduct their express testing as well.

Test stand configuration

Processor	AMD Athlon 200GE	AMD Athlon 220GE	AMD Athlon 240GE
Core name	Raven Ridge	Raven Ridge	Raven Ridge
Production technology	14 nm	14 nm	14 nm
Core frequency, GHz	3. 2	3.4	3.5
Number of cores/threads	2/4	2/4	2/4
L1 cache (total), I/D, KB	128/64	128/64	128/64
L2 cache, KB	2×512	2×512	2×512
L3 cache, MiB	4	4	4
RAM	2×DDR4-2666	2×DDR4-2666	2×DDR4-2666
TDP, W	35	35	35
GPU	Vega 3	Vega 3	Vega 3
Price	ask prices	N/A	N/A

In its finished form, the family of desktop Athlons now looks exactly like this: it is a trio of almost identical processors, since they have the same GPU, and the pair of processor cores is the same, only slightly different in frequency. Until recently, this was a normal phenomenon, since the “scatter” in the number of those same CPU cores within one desktop platform was small: usually twofold. Accordingly, clock speeds and/or SMT support in some models (and its absence in others) led to dense filling of the range from minimum to maximum performance without significant jumps. Now the situation has changed somewhat — in particular, within the framework of AM4, AMD already offers customers two (the same Athlon), four, six or eight cores (Ryzen 3/5/7), and single-threaded ones are found only in the amount of four. And the “working” clock frequencies are constantly changing depending on the load, so multi-core models have ceased to lose to the younger representatives of the families on “low-threaded” code — simply increasing the frequency in such cases to the same, or even to a higher level.

Processor	AMD Ryzen 3 2200G	AMD A10-7850K	Intel Pentium Gold G5400
Core name	Raven Ridge	Kaveri	Coffee Lake
Production technology	14 nm	28 nm	14 nm
Core frequency, GHz	3. 5/3.7	3.7/4.0	3.7
Number of cores/threads	4/4	2/4	2/4
L1 cache (total), I/D, KB	256/128	192/64	64/64
L2 cache, KB	4×512	2×2048	2×256
L3 cache, MiB	4	—	4
RAM	2×DDR4-2933	2×DDR3-2133	2×DDR4-2400
TDP, W	65	95	54
GPU	Vega 8	Radeon R7	UHD Graphics 610
Price	ask prices	ask prices	ask prices

Therefore, it makes sense to evaluate whether there are practically significant differences between Athlon models in comparison with other families. For example, the same Ryzen 3 2200G: designed for the same platform, but there are more cores and a more powerful GPU . .. In general, the results will immediately show what you can get for a small (especially against the background of the full cost of the computer) surcharge. We also once again decided to take the A10-7850K as an example — this is not the fastest solution for FM2 +, but it is well studied and familiar to many. Moreover, Athlon 200GE sometimes lagged behind it a little — let’s see what new models of the family will change here. And the old Athlon 200GE lagged far behind the Pentium G5400 noticeably everywhere, so it’s all the more worth comparing the new Athlons with it. We don’t need other Intel processors today — they are noticeably more expensive… However, the G5400 is a little expensive today, but it is popular, and it’s wrong to do without Intel processors at all.

Testing conditions were the same: using only integrated graphics and 16 GB of memory that meets the specifications of the processors. And the same SSD.

Test Method

The method is described in detail in a separate article. Here we briefly recall that it is based on the following four pillars:

• iXBT.com performance measurement method based on real applications of the 2017 sample
• Processor Test Power Consumption Measurement Methodology
• How to Monitor Power, Temperature, and Processor Load During Testing
• 2017 Game Performance Measurement Methodology

Detailed results for all tests are available as a complete results spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel 97-2003 format). Directly in the articles, we use already processed data. This is especially true for application tests, where everything is normalized relative to the reference system (AMD FX-8350 with 16 GB of memory, GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card and Corsair Force LE 9 SSD60 GB) and grouped according to the areas of application of the computer.

However, today we did not use game tests — it’s better to see what’s in more modern applications in the near future. And today, first of all, we need to replenish the database of results for the final article. Moreover, as it was already mentioned above, at the moment in the Athlon family the gradation is only in terms of the clock frequency of processor cores — so testing the graphics will not give any new information.

iXBT Application Benchmark 2017

As you might expect, a slight increase in frequency leads to a slight increase in performance. No quality changes. As such, perhaps, we can consider the fact that the 240GE has finally overtaken the A10-7850K — an old one, but once positioned by the company as a competitor to the Core i5 and sold at the appropriate price. But the Pentium G5400 failed to catch up a little. However, more importantly, from a qualitative point of view, modern Pentiums, along with Athlon and old A10/Athlon (primarily for FM2+), can be considered processors of the same class. Without any specification by model numbers. Here Ryzen 3 is already a qualitatively different level, not quantitative changes.

In rendering, the picture does not change — and could not. True, Athlon 220GE is already enough here to overtake A10-7850K. But, in principle, everything is equivalent — the «most interesting» APU continues to be the Ryzen 3 2200G. Athlon, of course, is cheaper — but also significantly slower.

Athlon 240GE has already managed to keep up with and Pentium G5400. To some extent — the result, but the ranks of participants are so dense that it can be ignored. And on Ryzen 3 — it’s worth paying attention. In general, at present, to work with video, it is desirable to acquire at least a quad-core processor — an unexpected discovery, isn’t it? 🙂

In this case, we recall that the results of Ryzen 3 “spoils” one of the Photoshop filters (more precisely, its incorrect operation in batch mode on processors without SMT) — but thanks to its superiority (up to twofold) in other programs, it still turns out to be the fastest » average». And the whole trio of Athlons essentially «degenerates» into one processor: plus or minus 5% is comparable in some cases with measurement errors. The new models have become even more convincing than compared to the «old» generations of APUs, but still noticeably slower than the Pentium. On the other hand, and noticeably cheaper, too, as before.

And also — the only thing that can be noted: the formal lag behind the A10-7850K has been eliminated. But once again it is clearly seen that a “big leap” cannot be made in our time by frequency alone. If only it could be raised one and a half times, but even at the best of times this was not such a mass phenomenon.

In some places, there are practically no changes at all: after all, Athlon and cores have little compared to the «adult» Ryzen (which in this scenario do not «shine» themselves), and the RAM frequency is limited (and it has not even been possible to increase it yet on boards that allow you to increase the clock frequency of the cores).

There was no talk of competition from the «old» platform before, and the new models have already almost caught up with the Pentium G5400, but it remains to be repeated once again — this does not matter much: the additional payment for is not so big another level performance.

And the grand total remains the same: Athlon and and are much slower than Pentium, and both of them are and much slower than Ryzen 3 2000G. What kind of Athlon and what kind of Pentium — in general, it does not matter.

The only interesting thing is that the processors lined up almost in an even line — although the frequency of 220GE is much closer to 240GE than 200GE. Actually, for this reason, many a priori assumed its «uselessness» — what is 100 MHz? As you can see, in practice, paying attention to the base frequency is not always useful, even in the case of models that officially do not know how to control it. However, it is quite possible that this behavior is connected with other characteristics of the new processors.

Energy consumption and energy efficiency

That Athlon is a very economical processor, and in this capacity it can compete not only with Ryzen, but with models for LGA1151, it was known from the very beginning. Actually, the company itself gave a direct hint at this by setting the TDP to 35 watts. But it was interesting how AMD will dispose of these features when updating the family. And here’s the answer: 220GE is not only slightly faster than 200GE, but also consumes the same amount of power. Apparently, if the manufacturer did not limit this parameter, the performance difference would be higher. But this is done in 240GE.

However, in the end, its “energy efficiency” is lower than even that of the 200GE. But the 220GE output is interesting. On the other hand, all younger Ryzen, as well as Athlon, are very similar in this regard. Especially if you remember the nightmares of the FM2+ or AM3+ times 🙂

Total

In principle, AMD is doing what it should be: saturating the market with processors. Moreover, it is difficult to rely on Intel in this regard now: the company is faced with a supply shortage, which, of course, caused desktop processor models to suffer in the first place (since you won’t reduce shipments of more mass-produced laptop ones), and the cheapest of them. And in this regard, two more budget APUs are good: there is at least something to choose from. Another question is that the «choice» as such is only apparent here — in fact, we are talking about almost the same processor. Slight differences in frequency lead to the same in terms of performance, and the graphics component is generally the same. Although, as it seems to us, it is precisely its modernization that would make sense: between 192 (Vega 3) and 512 (Vega 8) GPUs are just an abyss that can be filled. Those wishing to buy Athlon with graphics, almost like for Ryzen 3, would certainly be found at an intermediate price — after all, games in this class «rest» precisely on the GPU. Suffice it to recall the days of APU for FM1 or FM2/FM2+, when you could choose graphics with the same number of cores. And the APUs of the Bristol Ridge family, by the way, also applied: the two-module A8, A10 and A12 had different GPUs. And now some Vega 5, for example, would not hurt.

It seems to us that this is not being done simply because AMD has left too little room for maneuver for itself.