AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
Integrated graphics just got interesting, says Christian Guyton.
Integrated graphics just got interesting says Christian Guyton as he tests the latest generation of AMD so-called APUS packing 11 fancy-dan Vega GPU cores.
With the 3400G, AMD has Intel over a barrel in the graphics department. This new chip is the most sophisticated AMD APU chip on the market, with four full cores supported by its Radeon RX Vega 11 integrated graphics. It’s also the most expensive, but not by much; the 3400G costs around £133 – only a few pounds more than the current price of its predecessor, the 2400G. Both use Vega 11 graphics, but the 3400G uses a 12nm architecture rather than the 2400G’s 14nm. With solid memory support and an excellent 3.7GHZ base clock, the 3400G looks like it might be the new king of integrated graphics.
Of course, AMD’S main competitor for this chip isn’t its own last-gen CPU. The opposition to Radeon Vega is Intel’s UHD Graphics, with the closest comparison to Vega 11 being UHD 630, as found in CPUS such as the Core i3-8350k and i5-8600k.
The AMD graphical cores come with 704 stream processors, and AMD’S simultaneous multi-threading technology means there are eight CPU threads to play with. AMD also gets a leg up on Intel here by including an excellent stock cooler, the Wraith Spire, making the 3400G a great choice for cheap system builds. It’s easy to install and is compatible with 500 and 400-series AMD mobos (some of the older boards will require a BIOS update).
One of the obvious downsides is that the 3400G doesn’t have the 7nm Zen 2 architecture used in the higher-end Ryzen 3000 chips. Instead, it has Zen+, a sort of halfway house that’s more like the original Zen format with some added extras. Zen+ also lacks PCIE 4.0 support for super-fast M.2 drives, a big disadvantage compared to the non-apu Ryzen 3000 chips, but let’s remember this is for budget builds.
Price and performance
The 3400G does excellently in single-core tasks. It’s still inferior to more expensive CPUS, but it’s fantastic considering the price. Manual overclocking is unimpressive (in line with the majority of 3000-series Ryzen CPUS), AMD offers the Windows-only Ryzen
Master tool for automatic overclocking, but there’s no such option for Linux users; a couple of third-party tools attempt to replicate at least some of the features.
Performance compared to the previous-gen Raven Ridge CPUS (in this case, the 2400G) is five to ten per cent better on average, although SSD read and write rates are relatively unchanged. Conversely, performance in gaming is impressive, with frame rates 20-30 percent better than the 2400G. While 1080p gaming on the 3400G isn’t really viable, 720p gaming absolutely is. Even more good news is that AMD has finally sorted its driver support. There were always niggles with the previous 2400G display drivers, but the 3400G performed solidly.
The performance is good, yes, but in terms of raw value against power, it’s not quite up to snuff. The £98 Ryzen 3 3200G may be a better call for those looking to assemble a budget Gpu-less system, or the even cheaper brand-new (around £45) dual-core Athlon 3000G may be a better option. The 3400G is great, don’t get us wrong –it’s certainly the best CPU with integrated graphics on the market right now – but products that sit at the top of their category are often not the best value, and that’s the case here.