AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
Finally, next-gen integrated graphics performance arrives inside a CPU worthy of your main desktop system. Jarred Walton is suitably impressed.
Finally, the GPU-packing APUs have arrived from AMD and the first is a stonker. Enjoy 60 FPS, 1080p gaming backed with an eight-thread processing core.
After the tour de force of the Ryzen processor rollout over 2017, many had high hopes for the future Ryzen APUs (that’s with integrated graphics) and finally AMD has released its first models. The eternal problem with integrated graphics is trying to combine a good CPU with a decent GPU while keeping price, power, and other aspects in check. This is the best APU AMD has ever released, and it effectively kills off the Ryzen 5 1500X and lower CPUs.
On the CPU side of things, the first batch of Ryzen processors all used the same dual CCX (CPU Complex) design, with Threadripper going so far as to include two of those chips on a single package. The Ryzen CCX consists of four CPU cores, each with 512K of L2 cache, and a shared 8MB L3 cache. On the previous quad-core implementations (Ryzen 3 1200/1300X and Ryzen 5 1400/1500X), each CCX ends up with two disabled cores, and depending on the product, half of the L3 cache may also be disabled. For the Ryzen APUs, there’s only a single CCX, and a maximum of 4MB of L3 cache. That simplifies some aspects of multi-core operation – there are no cross-CCX latencies to worry about – but the reduced L3 cache size may at times be a factor.
In place of the second CCX, AMD has included a nice little graphics solution. The Ryzen 5 2400G calls it Vega 11, which is a Vega core with 11 enabled CUs (Compute Units), each of which includes 64 streaming processors (aka GPU cores). Eleven seems like an odd number, so there might be another CU disabled, but AMD didn’t comment on this.
As with most integrated solutions there’s no dedicated graphics memory, and that affects performance. But the Vega 11 brings along all the other new Vega architecture features, such as rapid-packed math (aka FP16), the Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer, reworked geometry engine, and more. Interestingly, Intel is getting around this in its future Core + Vega M chips by opting to include 4GB of HBM2, which should prove substantially faster, but also far more expensive – and it’s only for mobile solutions.
Unlocked and loaded
Like all of AMD’s Ryzen processors, the Ryzen 5 2400G comes fully unlocked – on both the CPU and GPU sides of the fence. Not to spoil the performance results, but at stock the 2400G basically sounds the death knell for the existing Ryzen 5 1500X. It’s officially priced lower, it has slightly higher clockspeeds, but half the L3 cache, 12 fewer PCIe lanes and it hits a similar overclocking limit. Both chips run in the same AM4 socket, so there’s now almost no reason to buy a four-core Ryzen 5 solution or the Ryzen 3 CPUs either, for that matter.
The test system supplied by AMD is extremely compact and showcases the type of super-small miniITX solution that would be ideal for a home theatre box. The entire system idles at just 21W, while under full load it peaks at about 90W. You won’t need any crazy cooling setup to keep things running within an acceptable temperature range.
What do you get from 704 streaming processors clocked at 1,250MHz, sharing system RAM with a four-
core/eight-thread Ryzen CPU? It shouldn’t be too surprising to see that the graphics performance falls well short of the RX 560 4GB, which has a similar core clockspeed but sports 1,024 cores and gets a dedicated 112GB/s of GDDR5 bandwidth. Performance in general will still be lower than even the RX 550 (512 cores and 112GB/s VRAM), thanks to the GDDR5 memory.
Shifting over to non-gaming benchmarks, many tests show a virtual draw between the 2400G and the 1500X. Overall, the 2400G and 1500X are effectively tied. Single-threaded Cinebench, for example, favours the 2400G, possibly thanks to the lack of inter-CCX latencies, or perhaps just due to the change in firmware and motherboard. The new APUs have killed off the need for the four-core Ryzen CPUs: the APUs have similar specs and perform about the same, and they include graphics as a bonus.
Video considerations
While the CPU performance may not be top of the charts, many users don’t need that sort of horsepower. A great example of this is video playback. We streamed a variety of HD content on the 2400G, all without complaint, and with extremely low power use: 28-30W for 1,080p content, 35-40W for 4K streaming, all without any stuttering. Technically, the Ryzen also sports the evil DRM magic required to stream Netflix or Amazon 4K, but whether Linux will be permitted to receive such streams is another question.
It’s inevitable that at some point AMD will create an APU that looks like Intel’s upcoming eighth-generation processor with Vega M graphics, meaning more graphics cores and some dedicated HBM2 VRAM. That might happen in 2019, or it might not be until 7nm processors become commonplace, but higher levels of integration is inevitable. For now, we must live with sharing, and graphics and processors aren’t very good at deciding who gets the most memory bandwidth – or rather, graphics cores will typically take all the bandwidth you can give them, at least up until the 100+ GB/s range, and system RAM simply isn’t fast enough. We can see the severe drop in performance when switching from fast DDR4-3200 memory to more typical budget DDR4-2400. This equates to about a 20 per cent loss of performance.
Be aware, most AM4 motherboards should support the new chips, but older boards will require a BIOS update, which may or may not need a dedicated card installed to carry out. AMD has a support page describing the problem.
Linux support appears to be good. You need the Linux kernel 4.15 to support the new APU out of the box. It’s recommend that you have kernel 4.16 because it includes bug fixes and optimisations. For many that will mean Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, which is no bad thing. We tested on a daily build of the Ubuntu 18.04 Alpha 2 with the 4.15 kernel and it worked flawlessly out of the box; no driver downloads, no Mesa updates. Two games we tried had issues, MetroLastLight hung the system and
DyingLight demanded a Mesa update (this might be in place by the time you read this). Otherwise, the benchmarks were with a vanilla Ubuntu install.
Who should buy the Ryzen 5 2400G? Budget gamers looking for a temporary layover on the way to a dedicated graphics card should be interested. Home theatre builds stand the most to gain. Stuff one of these into a mini-ITX box, with a good network connection and plenty of network storage, and you’re set with 1,080p gaming performance effectively thrown in for free.