The best AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Processor YD2200C5FBBOX review

The best AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Processor YD2200C5FBBOX review

The best AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Processor YD2200C5FBBOX review

PROS
Inexpensive.
Excellent gaming performance for an integrated graphics chip.

CONS
Underperforms slightly when running older single-threaded apps.

SPEC SHEET

Cores: 4
Threads: 4
Base clock: 3.5Hz
Boost clock: 3.7GHz
L3 cache: 4MB
GPU cores: 8 Radeon Vega compute units
GPU Clock: up to 1,100MHz
TDP: 65W

BENCHMARKS

Cinebench CPU: 146 (single-core); 562 (multi-core)
GeekBench: 3,849 (single-core); 10,573 (multi-core)
Handbrake: 28 fps (fast); 76 fps (normal)
Power consumption: 5.08W (min); 65.6W (max)
Temperature: 23-degrees Celsius (min); 58-degrees Celsius (max)

Test System "Raven Ridge"
Processor:	AMD Ryzen 3 2200G, Ryzen 5 2400G
Motherboard:	MSI B350I Pro AC AMD B350, BIOS E7A40AMS112PT5
Memory:	2x 8 GB G.SKILL Flare X DDR4 DDR4-3200 14-14-14-34
Graphics:	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Storage:	Crucial MX300 750 GB
Power Supply:	Seasonic SS-860XP
Software:	Windows 10 64-bit Creators Update
Drivers:	AMD 180126a-323860C, NVIDIA GeForce 382.05 WHQL
Test System "AM4"
Processor:	AMD Ryzen 3 1200, Ryzen 3 1300X, Ryzen 5 1400, Ryzen 5 1500X, Ryzen 5 1600, Ryzen 5 1600X, Ryzen 7 1700, Ryzen 7 1700X, Ryzen 7 1800X
Motherboard:	MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium AMD X370, BIOS v1.6
Memory:	2x 8 GB G.SKILL Flare X DDR4 DDR4-3200 14-14-14-34
Graphics:	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Storage:	Crucial MX300 750 GB
Power Supply:	Seasonic SS-860XP
Software:	Windows 10 64-bit Creators Update
Drivers:	NVIDIA GeForce 382.05 WHQL

Test System "LGA 2066"
Processor:	Intel Core i5-7640X, Core i7-7820X, Core i9-7900X
Motherboard:	ASRock X299 Taichi Intel X299, BIOS 1.60
Memory:	2x (KBL-X) or 4x (SKL-X) 8 GB G.SKILL Trident-Z DDR4 DDR4-3200 14-14-14-34
Graphics:	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Storage:	Crucial MX300 750 GB
Power Supply:	Seasonic SS-860XP
Cooling:	Noctua NH-U14S
Software:	Windows 10 64-bit Creators Update
Drivers:	NVIDIA GeForce 382.05 WHQL
Test System "Coffee Lake"
Processor:	Intel Core i3-8350K, Intel Core i5-8400, Intel Core i5-8600K, Intel Core i7-8700K
Motherboard:	ASRock Z370 Professional Gaming i7 Intel Z370
Memory:	2x 8 GB G.SKILL Flare X DDR4 DDR4-3200 14-14-14-34
Graphics:	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Storage:	Crucial MX300 750 GB
Power Supply:	Seasonic SS-860XP
Cooling:	Noctua NH-U14S
Software:	Windows 10 64-bit Creators Update
Drivers:	NVIDIA GeForce 382.05 WHQL

Test System "LGA 1151"
Processor:	Intel Core i3-7100, Core i3-7300, Core i5-7400, Core i5-7500, Core i5-7600K, Core i7-6700K, Core i7-7700K
Motherboard:	ASUS Maximus VIII Hero Intel Z170, BIOS 3401
Memory:	2x 8 GB G.SKILL Flare X DDR4 DDR4-3200 14-14-14-34
Graphics:	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Storage:	Crucial MX300 750 GB
Power Supply:	Seasonic SS-860XP
Cooling:	Noctua NH-U14S
Software:	Windows 10 64-bit Creators Update
Drivers:	NVIDIA GeForce 382.05 WHQL

The best AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Processor YD2200C5FBBOX review

everyone so let's say you're looking to build a budget gaming PC now traditional wisdom says that you kind of need to buy both CPU and GPU and until recently if we're looking at the lower end I'd say something like an Intel Pentium G 45 60 paired with an Nvidia GT 1030 would be the way forward but then AMD dropped this bomb the Verizon 320 200 G a APU that combines a quad-core wizened CPU and Radeon Vega graphics now if you've watched my stuff

in the past you'll know that I love budget PC hardware and this Verizon is exceptionally cool it's just nothing like it on the market at the moment so allow me to demonstrate what the big deal is first up there's the cost so yea this product is almost cheaper than that Pentium GT 1030 combo secondly it is ridiculously easy to overclock and as long as you're sensible you don't actually need to replace the supplied stock cooler quick look at some specs then 3.5

gigahertz clock speeds 3.7 gigahertz turbo 8 compute units at 1100 megahertz for about 1.1 to teraflops of GPU compute so we've got AMD's review kit here the gigabyte gaap 350 n Mini ITX board now the 2200 G is in situ there with the stock cooler oh and what's this g.skill flare X rated for 32 hundred megahertz with super low CL 14 latency AMD has supplied this high-end LAN because ap use work best with fast memory unfortunately it's also expensive memory I'm

using it for the benchmarks here but for my gameplay demos later on I'm slowing this ram down so it's equivalent to something that's actually a bit more affordable regardless though here are some quick benchmarks Grand Theft Auto 5 then 3 measurements II 1080p high settings well you get super visuals here and decent frame rates too funny enough the green line here stop performance with the Flair X modules running fully enabled and it's essentially

delivering a 15 percent boost in performance over the same processor running at the same settings but paired with slower 20 400 megahertz ddr4 however keep at the fast RAM and overclock the GPU to 1500 megahertz and we actually get a 19% improvement to performance over stock settings and yes I really was running this on the stock caller with no problems whatsoever another interesting result here with Far Cry primal running at 1080p on medium settings the stock 2200 G with fully enabled ddr4 here only offers a 6.3 percent uplift over the

same processor running with slower memory however with our overclock in place performance actually increases by about 28% pretty amazing stuff and remember that this overclock is entirely free as for The Witcher 3 well in the taxing novigrad City area truth is that 1080p medium is pushing things somewhat but faster memory at stock offers a 12 point six percent performance uplift once again the overclock is the star of the show here a 21 percent increase over stock with that faster memory but yeah those frame rates sort of early to late twenties not

great right well one root for what is a force to use a lower resolution so here's wise are the Tomb Raider showing scaling at 1080p 900 P and 720p dropping from 1080 to 900 boost performance by 30% if you can take the jumbo pixels reducing res from 1080p to 720p increases frame rates by about 80% so that's something to bear in mind now a lot of games have internal resolution scalars in their menu systems that retain a 1080p video output and keep the HUD native resolution upscaling the 3d elements only and for an APU this is well worth playing with okay

so these 1080p benchmarks aren't hugely compelling perhaps but the point is that we can actually run any game we throw at it and that's a start I mean I bought in a core i3 8100 which is more expensive than the 2200 G and as you can see when the games do actually boot performance is generally abysmal so there's genuine potential here with the 2200 G especially if we overclock so with that in mind I actually spent a day playing games as opposed to just

benchmarking them and there are some pretty good results so let's kick off with destiny 2 again that we know scales well to less capable Hardware 1080p resolution here with a mixture of low medium and high settings I've set the BIOS on the gigabyte board to a lot 2 gigs of memory to the GPU and this is perfectly fine for the games highest quality textures resolution scale 100% so yes this is native 1080p now personally I'd be playing this one with the game's 30fps lock in

place but I've left it unlocked so we can get an idea of overhead the game is looking pretty awesome actually and when north of 30 FPS for the most part sometimes we're getting a bit close to the threshold and occasionally yes we do dip beneath you can see this here with the bandwidth sapping supercharged effects here we dropped beneath that target 30fps threshold momentarily while that mode is in place and yeah when the game is running at its absolute

peak we can also see some further drops beneath our frame rate target here but this is the game at its most demanding and tweaks to the resolution scaler can help to mitigate some of these issues if they prove particularly bothersome but hang on a moment with arisin we actually have the CPU power to run destiny 2 at 60 frames per second so what does it take to get that silky smooth frame rate from the apu well I tried the resolution scaler set to 67% first of all which

essentially offers up a 720p internal resolution but yet not good enough as it happens 50% hit the target on the same settings as my 1080p gameplay so yeah 540 p effectively quarter resolution mostly 60 frames per second but there are still some hiccups here and there but this kind of illustrates the harsh trades you will face with triple-a gaming on an integrated graphics solution but moving on well holy crap titanfall 2 is awesome let's kick off here with the campaign 60 frames per second and it's locked and while it's obviously not full fat visual

experience it still looks pretty good most of the post process pipeline is intact I can use texture settings reserved for 3 gig cards and the dynamic resolution scaler keeps me locked at 16 now destiny won't let me run rivatuner monitoring but every other game no problem so up there in the top right we have the GPU and memory frequency that confirms 1.5 gigahertz on the GPU and memory at 1500 megahertz well this should be doubled for its real-life bandwidth so this does indeed confirm 3000 megahertz frequencies in play beneath that where we have the CPU

load core and under that the framerate let's talk settings we've got titanfall 2 here running on a mixture of medium and low settings ambient occlusion is off but some elements i've left on high now dynamic resolution can look a bit iffy at time but i've tried to mitigate that with eight times anisotropic filtering I've set the FPS target to 68 fps here to give overhead and to ensure the game stays locked at 60 and you know what it does and it plays beautifully so far we've seen

campaign action that is fairly demanding but I was concerned about memory bandwidth issues Titan on Titan action with screen filling explosions will obviously be a bit more challenging so I gave that a shot as well curiously at the beginning of the campaign mission here there what's a touch of stutter but as we get into the actual action well that's 60 frames per second but main some locks and I'd say that this is a pretty amazing turnout for a processor and I do recommend checking it out 60 fps then 60 frames per second it's a prime requisite for

overwatch and with a bit of tweaking once again the 2200 G will do you proud 1080p output high textures eight times anisotropic filtering low shadows and everything else on medium effectively resolution scaling is not 1080p however I'm on 75% here which is 8/10 P basically still looks pretty decent overall but I do kind of wish that the consoles dynamic scaler could be in play here regardless we've got a nice-looking experience here and with a title like this

framerate is king and a locked 60 is key okay so from here on out we're really gonna challenge to 2,200 G player unknowns battlegrounds pub G yes we're going there I mean it's going is hardly optimal its no destiny - or Titan fool - in that regard I sort of went in thinking that if we were Xbox one quality levels and performance we've probably got a pretty decent result there where Xbox one is a mixture of very low low and possibly medium settings I've started out here with 1080p output on medium settings high textures but low shadows but opening descent is

ropey just as it is on Xbox but even wandering about with not much going on gives us frame rates in the mid 20s so if I drop the screen scale to 90 percent that gives us a 17 28 by 9 72 internal resolution still looks okay performance improves but we're still dipping beneath 30 at times not good so let's move that resolution scaler to 83% which takes us to a 900 P internal resolution things aren't brilliant but the worst frame rates have improved but yeah 900p perhaps not ideal however punchy runs on Unreal Engine 4 which actually has a superb

temporal anti-aliasing solution and I think I have enough overhead available to move anti-aliasing up to high which will tidy up image quality a bit I mean it's not a great experience but this is a demanding game and by and large the 2200 G is holding up one further area we should possibly tweak foliage on scenes with a ton of it once again we're having some sub 30 FPS issues regardless though this game running on a processor with no discrete graphics card well I'm impressed so I wonder just how far I could push it rise of the Tomb Raider yeah this is one

taxing game 900p resolution is a must here and I'm running with vsync with triple buffering so that performance it with vsync engaged weren't be so bad settings high textures yes I'm going there and pretty much everything else on medium with four times anisotropic filtering pure hair I have turned that off there that's a lot of compute power dedicated to a pretty all amount of screen real estate so let's push things hard straight away with the geothermal Valley now the

hub areas in Tomb Raider are the most challenging in the game and yes there are still some dips beneath 30 frames per second are they GPU related though well if you look at the CPU measurements in the top right there you'll see that we're close to maxed at 30 frames per second notice so why is this well remember that memory bandwidth is hugely important to an APU and it's shared between both the CPU and GPU components now if that bandwidth could be allocated to the CPU alone with a discrete GPU in place you'd see a vast increase in

performance from the CPU side to illustrate here's the 2200 G and indeed the competing core i3 8100 paired with an overclocked Titan X Pascal running the same content at very high settings now the 8100 is faster and it's faster running on slower memory no less 20 400 megahertz LAN is its limit or rather it will be when Intel gets its act together with cheaper boards but the point is that the Rison 320 200g CPU is clearly capable of a lot more when it doesn't have memory

bandwidth contention with the GPU in fact we're looking at almost twice the performance level but we're turning to our apu gameplay tests if the geothermal valley is one of the more demanding areas the prophets tomb is somewhat lighter for the most part and it holds up pretty well cutscenes can cause some issues but I'm not particularly fussed about that it's kind of alright with me when the player isn't in control overall though we're staying north of 30 FPS in gameplay for the most part and that's pretty cool massive screen filling water effects once

again cos and then we bandwidth bottleneck and yes performance will drop here but you know by and large this really demanding game is still perfectly playable what I'd really like to see though is driver level 30fps support with proper frame pacing gear something I did talk about with the AMD driver team when I'm with them a little while back and this kind of functionality would be a crucial addition for this APU now we saw some which of benchmarks earlier on that

were a bit well let's say sub-optimal mid 20s at 1080p isn't great i targeted 900p on a mixture of medium and high with the settings reductions aimed at the sort of stuff and likely to affect memory bandwidth our novigrad City test run runs fairly well but drops to at 27 frames per second minimum the cutscenes before you take on the Griffon here look beautiful and generally stay north of 30 which isn't bad at all with all that foliage in place however once we factor in bandwidth sapping effects like fire yeah things don't really hold up same for depth of field

really so yeah maybe we were a bit too ambitious with settings there even at 900 P but it illustrates that there are games that thrive on memory bandwidth that this apu and indeed any apu will have issues with i'm going to end this with a really cool experience though again at the top of this review i showed a GTA v benchmark and it was pretty cool some really decent results there I initially started out with these settings a mixture of high and normal with very high textures the V man meter at the top there gives me some idea of how to spend the budget but

I've actually set the internal scaler to render at 900 be effective and my question could we hit 60 frames per second on an APU that would be really sweet well as you can see here I mean it's okay late 40s to mid 50s but we don't quite have the horsepower to get the job done so what if we went in the other direction and targeted 1080p native and started to ramp up the settings so let's climb into this helicopter and really put the engine through its paces with some extreme war distances well you know what it's holding up and it looks good sort of 45 fps no-man's land

though so I put shadows up too high and match that with the same settings for ambient occlusion and tessellation mid 30s to early 40s now but the visual feature set is looking really solid GTA 5 does have a 30 FPS cap but it's a bit rubbish plane pacing is poor and again an AMD Drive level 30 FPS mode with a locked 33 milliseconds aim persistence would do a world of good here fingers crossed that this does eventually happen for AMD users as it is a really

useful feature on NVIDIA hardware ok so a couple of final questions I had can are overclocked 2200 G really deliver discrete level GPU performance and can I actually handle any triple a game well on the latter point Assassin's Creed unity shows that some games will just be too much now possibly at 720p you'll get something playable but really it's demands are just too much you'll note that the GT 1030 even paired with the faster vison 520 400 G is only

marginally ahead Crysis 3 well the benchmark shows the GT 1030 screaming ahead here but I've tried 900p on medium with the APU and there seems to be a real issue with this game on areas with far out detail and tons of draw calls for 2200 G absolutely tanks turn around though suddenly everything's fine kind of weird Far Cry primal benchmark does show that overclocked 2200 G drawing level with the GT 1030 though which is interesting the bottom line though is that there will be scenarios where the 2200 G offers entry level discrete performance

but equally well you'll need fast RAM to do so and even then you're going to struggling games that really do need decent amounts of memory bandwidth as we saw in destiny 2 and The Witcher 3 now if only every game could have a dynamic scaling system as good as titanfall twos okay so that's all for me for now I really enjoyed my testing with the 2200 G and I was really impressed with the results from this processor and AMD's decision not to have a bespoke

socket requiring a dedicated motherboard for AP news really pays off here the same system will happily house a high-end Rison CPU and whatever discrete GPU you care to upgrade with later on down the road that's a massive plus point in my book a game changing you might say.