Reviews AMD Ryzen 5 3400G Review

No Zen2, no buy.

 

Still think these are absolutely cracking chips for their target audience - 4Ghz+ and 4c/8t is more than enough general CPU grunt for a family/kids PC to power Windows/Office/Youtube etc, and the iGPU is genuinely powerful enough for light gaming. The low power consumption and heat output are just the cherry on the cake.

Zen 2 APU's, if they come with Navi/RDNA graphics, will be a game changer though.

 

QFT

 

Sorry to be that guy, but when it comes to the benchmarks wouldn't it be best to benchmark this against lower end CPUs and/or older higher end chips? It's a given that they'll be slower than the latest Core and Ryzen chips, but nobody who is looking at one of these is realistically looking at one of those. Seeing how it does against something like an i5 4570 bolted to a GTX 960 or 1050 is surely a more useful comparison for the budget, since they're in the same sort of ballpark for total cost.

 

I'm looking to get an APU for a portable gaming rig for Overwatch and CS:GO, something small and light

 

in other words its a decent choice for replacing my dad's phenom II x3 with a geforce 520 ... which is kind of what the lower sku ryzens always have been for ... mean seriously what do you guys want a threadripper with geforce 1060 igpu's for less than most ram kits?

 

Wouldn't say no.

 

And how would you go about retesting the age-old hardware? You can't simply use the old numbers, because they might not be accurate anymore. And where do you draw the line? 2 years old? 5? 10?

Not saying I don't want it, but I don't think it's realistic.

 

I was deliberating over going for this 3400G or a 2400G, found the 2400G cheap so picked it up and had a bit of a play, I also found GPU overclock was problematic, discovered there was a bit of a frequency hole where the chip would not overclock but if you go beyond and set 1500+ it would overclock fine.

Didn't manage to hit anymore CPU speed than yourselves with 3.9Ghz all core but did get 3466Mhz RAM and 1600 on GPU, it would appear there is not a great deal of difference between a 2400G and a 3400G if you hit the same clocks, so choose either if you are happy to tinker.

Some numbers from the clocked up 2400G

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/9004344

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/20767948 (only 3400 RAM, forgot to run after I set 3466, not loads of difference anyway as one is cl14 and the other cl16)

These are cracking APUs it is surprising what they can play when tuned appropriately, our upgrade was done for a bit of low end gaming for my daughter, minecraft etc, this breezes it, but it'll also play big games at console levels, with some settings tweaks 1080p60 is not out of reach, I'm impressed.

They don't really need Zen2 as the CPU is held back by the performance of the on board GPU but hope to see a bigger/better GPU in these in the future, as it is this is a massive upgrade from the A10-5700 it replaces which struggled to play minecraft without turning things down even when I dropped in a GPU as the CPU was not strong.

Biggest limiter I have found tuning this chip is lack of cooling ability, the chips don't have soldered heatspreader so cook like an Intel chip, under prime stability testing I was nudging the thermal throttle limit, doesn't help I am in a tiny pink uATX case that only just fits the board with poor airflow and the cooler is a low profile jobby, still, those loads are unrealistic in this machines use case, so not too bothered, but in Crysis 3 in some of the CPU heavy sections when it is near maxing out 8 threads it is nudging 90.