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  • brakdoo - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The reason why I bought the 200GE last month: The 5400 is 75€+ and was above 80 when I bought my parts in my country. The Intel shortage makes it easy to decide but I that it'll be over soon.

    BTW: Does graphics performance have an influence on WebGL stuff like google maps or isn't that challenging enough?
  • blu42 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Shouldn't 'measured under heavy load' suggest a heavy load for the entire package, not the CPU cores alone?
  • Robotire - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    This. I’m surprised a pure CPU (I think?) load was used. I would be interesting to know power usage while gaming.

    Also I’m more likely to buy a component that uses less power… but I guess some SUV owners might prefer it the other way.

    Otherwise it’s a very interesting article, thanks! I don’t care at all about overpriced products, but reviews like this one are useful.
  • SaturnusDK - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    It's important to note that even if you could get a G5400 at the $64 MSRP, it would be 16% more expensive than the $55 Athlon. However, you can't get the G5400 for $64. The lowest price I have ever seen it retail at is $80 which makes the choice for a absolutely bottom bin bargain buyer easy.
    If you're still even contemplating the G5400 at it's actual $80 price tag then it would be wise to consider if you can go the extra $20 and get the vastly superior 2200G instead.
  • Drumsticks - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    As of right now, the Pentium G5400 is $129.99 on Newegg (??????) and $101 on Amazon from an alternate seller. OTOH, the Athlon 200GE is readily available from both for $60. That's a pretty stark difference.
  • ikjadoon - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The pricing is out of whack at Newegg: G5400 for $129, G5500 (3.8GHz w/ UHD630) for $114, and G5600 (3.9GHz w/ UDH630) for $113.

    You save $16...while buying a higher-end part.

    B&H Photo has it for slightly-less absurd 24% markup over MSRP ($80): https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1393125-REG...
  • khanikun - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Ya, the G5400 makes no sense with it's pricing. An i3 8100 is a quad core 3.6 ghz proc with UHD630 for $119. Unless power usage is a main concern, I wouldn't bother with any of those G procs currently. Until prices drops, doesn't make much sense to buy them.
  • Zim - Saturday, January 19, 2019 - link

    $65 at Fry's https://www.frys.com/product/9499961
  • StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Even in Australia... The G5400 is $129. - Doesn't make sense to grab that when you can get the Ryzen 3 2200G for $155... You could probably find a motherboard that reduces that $26 pricing gap.

    Otherwise the 200GE is $79... $50 cheaper.

    The G4920 is more inline with the 200GE's price at $89 currently... And at that point, the 200GE is still the decided victor.
  • PVG - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    I think TDP has to cover simultaneous heavy usage of both the CPU and IGP. POV-Ray only really stresses the CPU side.
    I see how one can disregard the IGP contribution on higher end chips, but on models like this, where there's a big chance the IGP will actually be put to use, I fell it should be taken into account, on the power measuring front.
  • mczak - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Yes, I'd expect at least the Athlon to be quite close to its TDP with simultaneous CPU+IGP load.
    The Pentium probably not really (although the Pentium G5500/G5600 could get close, as these have the GT2 (UHD 630) rather than the GT1 (UHD 610) graphics, which also should be much more competitive with the Athlon).
  • biiiipy - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    In my country the cheapest I can find is 200GE for 50€ andG5400 for 90€... yeah...
  • ET - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Very nice to see a low end comparison, and a quite comprehensive one at that.

    What I don't understand is why quite a few benchmarks (especially on the IGP tests) are missing some of the CPUs.
  • Rudde - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The test setup table doesn't include the G5400.
  • shabby - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The g5400 is $183 on amazon...
  • T1beriu - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    You should have measured the power consumption for 100% CPU load + 100% GPU load, lile POV + Furmark?
  • Flunk - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    These are close enough that I would buy whichever I could get cheaper (with a compatible board of course).
  • Targon - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Of course, if you are looking to start low but then upgrade later, socket AM4 will allow upgrades from the lowest end to top end.
  • edzieba - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    So could the Pentium, right to the 9900k.
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    @Ian: thanks, and I agree with your conclusion, but only if the ~$60 mark is a hard upper limit. Take-home for me: if you believe that you're going to be working and gaming on the iGPU of the chip even for a few months, try as hard as you can to get the extra $40 and buy the Ryzen 2200 G instead, which retails for $99 or so. That is still the value king here, and by a big margin. Unlike either the Pentium or the Athlon, the 4 cores and the (much beefier) iGPU of the 2200G can provide the 25-30 frames/second in many of the games tested here, has generally superior performance on non-gaming applications as well, and, once the dedicated graphics card arrives, it still gives a better showing than either Athlon or Pentium. Plus, as Gavin here and others on their sites have shown, there is significant headroom left for overclocking if that extra 10% or so is a must-have. So, long in short: For a budget system, and if at all possible, get the Ryzen 2200G. It is well worth the 40 bucks more.
  • Ratman6161 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    One issue is though that at my favored place to buy CPU's (microcenter.com) The 2200G isn't $40 more, its only $30 more. The 200GE is $49.99 and the 2200G is $79.99. Add to that you can get a B450 motherboard for $59.99. So for just $30 more for the total system price and the fact that the 2200G/B450 combo guarantees overclocking capability, I couldn't really see going with either of the CPU's in this review.
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Fully agree, and, at those prices (2200G at $ 79.99, plus mobo for $59.99), it's even more a closed and shut case. Neither the Athlon nor the Pentium come anywhere near the 2200G, especially if the iGPU is "it", which is likely for a budget system. The only scenario I can see for a builder to chose the Athlon or the Pentium is if they a. are on sale, and b. if it's for one's parents or grandparents, and all they want to do is browse the web and some occasional light office work. But, even there, if one can swing the extra $30, why not get the much more capable 2200G? With the added ability to play some games, maybe you'll visit more often (:
  • GreenReaper - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    I was thinking this throughout - "wow, this review is a great advertisement for the 2200G!"

    Personally I'd like to wait for a chip with AV1 support, Navi and PCIe 4.0, but it seems likely that you'll be able to upgrade to all of that at a later date if you pick your motherboard right.
  • DominionSeraph - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Can you put the venerable i5 2500 in the new Bench? With used systems available for $90 it's the price/performance champion.
  • jordanclock - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    On the Overclocking page:

    "In recent weeks, motherboard manufacturers have been releasing BIOS firmware that enables overcooking on the Athlon 200GE."

    I know OCing can increase temperatures, but calling it overcooking might be a little strong.
  • mczak - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Ian,

    I think you might want to rephrase every paragraph which has "AVX" in it. From your wording it sounds like you're surprised the pentium doesn't benefit much from the use of AVX, whereas the truth is it doesn't support AVX at all, hence even if you use avx-optimized binaries it's still going to use an sse-only path.
    This is of course a reversal of the other Core chips vs. Ryzen - intel typically benefits quite a bit more from AVX code, since it actually has simd units which are physically 256bit wide, whereas Ryzen only has simd units which are 128bit wide.
  • GreenReaper - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    I agree, I was a little confused when I saw talk of AVX for the Pentium - don't get me wrong, SSE optimizations can provide great benefits (compare 'openssl speed -evp' to 'openssl speed' on a Celeron), and probably they are used by the "optimized" path but it's not going to give the same results.

    As you say, "supports" is debatable on Ryzen. But even if a CPU didn't really support it on a hardware level at all (which is not the case), its use might result in improvements due to the ability to provide a microcode equivalent than is faster than the SSE-based alternatives.
  • silverblue - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    It's not really debatable in my eyes - it may be half-speed, but there's no AVX offset - as far as I can tell - to worry about. When Zen 2 pops up, perhaps it'll have to behave more like Intel's implementation.
  • eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Agree. After all, in the Intel universe, the absence of AVX is a key differentiator between the Pentium and the core i3; if you want hardware-supported AVX extensions, you have to fork over the extra $$$ and get at least the entry-level core chip.
  • kkilobyte - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    I'd like to know where one would find the G5400 at 60$, or even at the same price as the 200GE.

    I don't seem to be able to find the G5400 in Europe for less than 75€. On the other hand, I can get a 2000GE at 55-60€.

    For example, Materiel.net - one of the most popular online shops in France and Belgium, has the cheapest Intel i3, the G4900, at 67.95€, while the 200GE is 57.95€. And the G5400? They list it as 'out of stock', at more than 100€ (!)

    If both where at the same price, indeed, the Intel CPU would be more interesting. But if it's either unavailable or 20-50% more than the price given in the article, what's the point?
  • kkilobyte - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    s/i3/Pentium. Obviously :)
  • freedom4556 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    I think you messed up your charts for Civ 6's IGP testing. That or why are you testing the IGP at 1080p Ultra when all the other IGP tests are at 720p Low?
  • freedom4556 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Also, the 8k and 16k tests are pointless wastes of time. Especially in this review, but also in the others. Your low/med/high/ultra should be 720p/1080p/1440p/4k if you want to actually represent the displays people are purchasing.
  • nevcairiel - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The Civ6 tests are like that because thats when it really starts to scale like the other games. Look at its IGP vs Low, which is 1080p vs 4K. The values are almost identical (and still pretty solid). Only if you move to 8K and then 16K you see the usual performance degredation you would see with other games.
  • AnnoyedGrunt - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    I second this motion. Please have settings to cover the various common monitor choices. 1080P is an obvious choice, but 1440P should be there too, along with 4K. I don't think you need to run two 4K versions, or two 1080P versions, or whatever. I have a 1440P monitor so it would be nice to see where I become GPU limited as opposed to CPU limited. Maybe Civ6 could use some extra high resolutions in the name of science, but to be useful, you should at least include the 1440P on all games.

    Thanks.

    -AG
  • eddieobscurant - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Another pro intel article from Ian, who hopes that someday intel will hire him
  • PeachNCream - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The numbers in the chart speak for themselves. You don't have to acknowledge the conclusion text. It's only a recommendation anyway. Even though I'd personally purchase a 200GE if I were in the market, I don't think there is any sort of individual bias coming into play. Where the 200GE is relevant, gaming on the IGP, Ian recommended it. In other cases the G5400 did come out ahead by enough of a margin to make it worth consideration. The only flaw I could tease out of this is the fact that the recommendation is based on MSRP and as others have noted, the G5400 is significantly above MSRP right now. It may have been good to acknowledge that in the intro and conclusion in a stronger manner, but that means the article may not stand up as well to the test of time for someone browsing this content six months later after searching for advice on the relevant CPUs via Google.
  • kkilobyte - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Acknowledge "in a stronger manner"? Well, it is actually not acknowledged in the conclusion at all!

    The title of the article is: "The $60 CPU question". One of those CPU is clearly not being sold at $60 on average, but is priced significantly higher. I think the article should have compared CPUs that are really available at (around) $60.

    So maybe there is no personal bias - but there is clearly ignorance of the market state. And that's surprizing, since the G5400 price was above its MSRP for several months already; how could a professional journalist in the field ignore that?

    I guess it could be objected that "MSRP always was used in the past as the reference price". Granted - but it made sense while the MSRP was close to the real market price. It doesn't anymore once the gap gets big, which is the case for tbe G5400. Nobody gives a damn about the theorical price if it is applied nowhere on the market.

    And the 'numbers of chart' don't 'speak for themselves' - they are basically comparing CPUs whose retail price, depending on where you get them, show a 20-40% price gap. What's the point? Why isn't there a price/performance graph, as there were in past reviews? The graphs could just as well include high-end CPUs, and would be just as useless.

    If I want to invest ~$60 in a CPU, I'm not interested to know how a ~$90 one performs!
  • sonny73n - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    +1

    I couldn’t have said it better myself.
  • cheshirster - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 - link

    Yes, 5400 is priced nowhere near 60$ and reviewer definitely knows it, but fails to mention this in conclusion.
  • Irata - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Did some checking and in the US, I found the G5400 on sale for $129.99 at Newegg. The Athlon GE 200 was $ 59.99.

    The Intel CPU (LGA 1151 300 series) that had the same price was the Celeron G4920 - it's a 2C2T CPU (G5400: 2C/4T), has half the L3 cache of the G5400 and runs at 3.2 vs. 3.7 Ghz.

    In Germany, I checked Mindfactory and the Pentium Gold G5400 was available for a more reasonable € 86.37. For around the same price you can get a Ryzen 3 2200G - if you want an iGPU - or if you don?t, you can get a Ryzen 3 1200 for € 10 less.

    So from an actual retail price performance perspective, things look quite different - don't you guys check the store links that are embedded in the article ?

    One last thing - which sane person would combine either the Athlon GE or the Pentium Gold with a GTX 1080 ?
  • PeachNCream - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    "One last thing - which sane person would combine either the Athlon GE or the Pentium Gold with a GTX 1080?"

    No one, but for other Anandtech benchmarks carried out over the course of this year on upcoming CPUs that will also use a 1080, this will mean the results will be comparable and the GPU will not act as a bottleneck at sub-4k resolutions.
  • Irata - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    But the article clearly says that "In gaming with a discrete graphics card, for example, if you've invested in something like the GTX 1080, the Intel Pentium will push more frames and higher minimums in practically every test at every resolution."

    I am not saying this is not correct - the G5400 runs @ 3.7 Ghz vs. the Athlon's 3.2 Ghz - but again even mentioning something like this... if you go for either of the two APU, it is because you want / need to spend the minimum money available, so it's definitely not GTX 1080 territory. I could see them mentioning something in the RX 1030 Ti / 1050 / RTX 560 range but even then there are better alternatives.
  • sing_electric - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    I don't think that anyone would realistically pair a $55 CPU with a GPU that's worth 10x that (except in oddball cases- like a base that you plan on upgrading), but that they didn't want any of the benchmarks to be GPU-limited. If they used say, a GTX 1030/50 or RX 550/60, some of the benchmarks might have been GPU-limited and would make the AMD and Intel parts look similar in ways they're not.

    A good, but separate idea is to do builds that hit various price points using combinations of AMD and Intel CPUs with/without dGPUs to see where you win. At today's prices, ~$250 is enough for a cheap-ish enclosure/psu ($70), 8GB DDR4 ($55), 256GB SSD ($60) and mobo ($60), so for $300 you'd be comparing these 2 processors with IGP, but for $400+ things get interesting (since you could compare say, the Ryzen 3 and 5 APUs vs. this chip with a dGPU), and $500+ things get a lot more interesting. For $600+, you're in a place where you have a lot of flexibility with creating a system that works for your use case (including more storage, RAM, etc.)
  • Irata - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Very good suggestion actually - the builds at different price points including all needed hardware.

    As for the GPU benchmarks - on one hand I do understand that they don't want a GPU bottleneck, but realistically if buyers in this range do not go for GPU that cost more than 150-200 and they do get identical results, then this is what matters to the buyer.

    That said, I still think that the Pentium Gold would make for good budget gaming PC paired with something like a GTX 1050 Ti *if* it were available at MSRP - would definitely prefer it to the Athlon GE at that price point.

    Funny thing is Ian says "y. The two chips in today’s analysis, the Intel Pentium Gold G5400 and the AMD Athlon 200GE, cost around $60 apiece, which I forked out for personally as I was never expecting to be sampled."

    The question is: When and where ? The Intel CPU shortage has been going on for a few months now, so if he got it right after release, it may have been worth checking prices before writing the article.

    If there is a store that has them in stock for this price, it would be helpful to say which one it is.

    But it's not and it hasn't been so I quite fail to see the point of this article. You either get a much better CPU / APU from AMD for the same price or a much worse (lower clocked 2C/2T Celeron) Intel based CPU
  • silverblue - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    It would make sense to benchmark on a GTX 1030 (GDDR5) or RX 550 in addition to the 1080 to show what you could expect with more likely hardware, in addition to highlighting the Pentium's superior IPC out of the box.

    We would definitely appreciate that overclocked test suite, that's for certain. I know people will say that the Athlon isn't supposed to be overclocked, but given that a handful of motherboard manufacturers are now offering this - MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte to name three - I feel that it could be a viable alternative if you really need cheap and cheerful.
  • ikjadoon - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    This article is about a year-late on MSRP pricing, unfortunately:

    https://camelcamelcamel.com/Intel-Pentium-Desktop-...

    That 14nm supply shortage: by the time prices go back down, Sunny Cove will be out, so where does article fit?

    As hardware gets EOL'd, it raises in price, so these things will be priced even worse.
  • sing_electric - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The way I read that is that Intel has gotten very good at 14nm yields, and no longer has (m)any processors with enough issues that they have to sell them as a G5400, and can instead sell them as faster, higher end parts.
  • ikjadoon - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    You missed the key issue. "...instead sell them as faster, higher-end, and *more expensive* parts." They might make more money selling "working chips with disabled features" at $65 than "working chips with all features" at $120.

    Unless Intel is selling a product reliably at $55 to $85, then it's lost sales. These Pentiums are the default in the $250 to $500 office PC space.
  • sing_electric - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    When there's not a shortage, sure, you sell good chips with disabled features, since you'd rather sell a Core i3 than have an i5 unsold, and you'd rather sell a Pentium than have an i3 stuck in channel, but *right now* Intel's capacity-constrained: They can't make enough higher-end parts to meet demand, so it seems like they're really trying to sell every chip as the highest-end version of whatever it is (they're even selling chips with disabled IGP at the high end, presumably because the IGP is faulty).
  • shabby - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Lol this chip hasn't been $60 for half a year, what was AT thinking writing this article? The intel bias is strong here.
  • yannigr2 - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    I stopped reading this article when I saw that the Pentium price is NOT based on the ACTUAL price of the processor in the market, but just some marketing/wishful thinking that Intel posts on it's site.

    Pity. I was expecting more from Anandtech.
  • mobutu - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    "In gaming with a discrete graphics card, for example, if you've invested in something like the GTX 1080..."

    so we're talking about the absolute cheapest of the cheap build but all of the sudden "you invested in a GTX 1080" ?

    megaLOL wtf is this
  • sing_electric - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Yeah, that sentence is weird (though I guess, if you have $400 now, you can get a working system with a very solid PSU and the rest of the specs listed here, and if you have money later, plop in a dGPU you actually want, and after that, get the CPU you actually want), but the reason to use a GTX 1080 in the test is that you can be more or less guaranteed that none of the scores you saw were GPU-bound, so you're getting an idea of CPU performance. Otherwise, whatever GPU they chose (1030? 1050? RX 550/560?) would sometimes be the bottleneck, meaning the charts wouldn't tell you anything comparing the two CPUs.
  • drexnx - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    I think the obvious conclusion from this article is skip both and buy the R3 2200G
  • shabby - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    That cpu is still cheaper than the g5400 which costs $130 even at Newegg. Where did Ian get the price of the g5400? It makes this article worthless.
  • sing_electric - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    Right, I think these processors are aimed more at OEMs trying to hit a price point. The cheapest I can do a reasonable system build around these is $305, in which case, the extra cash to go for the R3 seems like a no-brainer.

    Even if its an upgrade vs. a new build, you're looking at ~$180 minimum ($60 for the CPU, $60 for the motherboard, since there is basically no way you already AM4/LGA1151 system and look at this as an "upgrade," and that means you probably need new RAM since chances are you're coming from DDR3), in which case, why not spend the extra $30-40 for a significant step up in processor (and, in the case of AMD, one that officially supports overclocking).
  • piasabird - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    I would have thrown in the Intel i3 8100 quad core which is selling for $118 on Newegg. It is close to the same price as the i3 7100. If you purchase it at a Micro Center you might get $30 off on a motherboard combo.
  • drzzz - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    WTF Ian? As of this post the Intel is 183$ follow the link in the article and the AMD is 60$. This is not a even close to comparing 60$ parts. Seriously how did this get by the editors?
  • shabby - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link

    The editors were intel...
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    To be sure, the normal price on the G5400 is ~$64. Past that, we have no specific control over whatever pricing shenanigans Amazon and its partners are up to at any given moment.
  • Irata - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Define "normal". Yes, the MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price) is $64, but you cannot - and have not been able to for a while - find the G5400 anywhere near this price (for stores that actually have them in stock).

    In terms of pricing - it's not just Amazon or Newegg - many posters here checked sites in various countries and it is more expensive everywhere.

    So imho, "normal" pricing would be the actual street price. And if you look at current prices, the Athlon GE's counterpart is actually a lower clocked 2C2T Celeron G4920 with half the G5400's L3 cache or alternatively, the G5400's counterpart would be the Ryzen 2200G / Ryzen 3

    As Ian stated that he bought this in Retail - where and when ?

    It would have good to either base the review on actually available parts / street prices or add a caveat stating that the G5400 is not available for the msrp.
  • yannigr2 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Bravo, you said everything.

    People will read this review, go to ANY shop, see the processor at double price and buy a Celeron. because the review told them that the Intel processor is faster in most tasks. This is how consumers behave, especially when they don't have technical knowledge. That's how an RTX 2080Ti sells a GTX 1050 when the RX 570 is faster in every way.

    This article is posted for a specific reason, and that's not a fair comparison.

    JMO
  • shabby - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    That's your excuse? We're not first graders here, when an article is based on the price you better make sure no shenanigans affect the price, try harder next time.
  • drzzz - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    What a crappy response Ryan. Given the entire mess about pricing that was made over the i7-7700K a few years ago by this very site. Arguing that street price is the valid metric vice MSRP at the time. Given the article was released without even one editor's note about the G5400 not being available anywhere for the MSRP was just a mistake. Own up to it and correct the article. When I can get a 2400G for the same price as the G5400 there is no comparison in performance or value. Looking at how much of the comments are about the price issues vice any other point from the article and face palm is all I can think about.
  • yannigr2 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Really? Is Amazon dictation the G5400 price on the planet? I thought Intel was doing it. Because there is no chance to find this processor at that price on the planet. At least not as new.

    It WAS nice reading Anandtech this last 15 years.
  • SaturnusDK - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    No Ryan. The "normal" price is not $64. It's the 1k unit price. You'll probably never see this retail at less than $69... at best.
  • The_Assimilator - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    FFS, all you dipshits complaining "bu... bu... but... G5400 isn't $60" should actually look at the MSRP on Intel's site: https://ark.intel.com/products/129951/Intel-Pentiu...

    I agree that the chip isn't selling at anywhere near that due to shortages, but Ian has to take a baseline from somewhere and MSRP makes the most sense.
  • Irata - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Point taken about the baseline but what's the point of the review if you cannot get the CPU for the MSRP ? The one that's closest price wise is actually a Celeron G 4920.

    The alternative would have been to either mention that current prices are a lot higher or post the article once the G5400 is again available for MSRP.
  • Haawser - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    When RX series GPUs were being pushed into stratospheric pricing by mining did reviews quote their 'normal' price, or the price people could actually buy them at ? So why are the rules suddenly different when the situation is reversed and it's the AMD product that's the cheaper option ?
  • Irata - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    The price push happened after the release - but do check Anandtech graphics cards reviews - they do have a tendency of mentioning current street / retail prices for both AMD and nVidia cards, which is how it should be.

    This is from the RX580 review:

    "The biggest challenge right now is that GTX 1060 prices have come down to the same $229 spot just in time for the RX 500 series launch, so AMD doesn’t have a consistent price advantage"
  • yannigr2 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Assimilator is a known Intel Nvidia hardcore fan. Ignore him.
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Yes, pointing out facts makes me a fanboy. You a Trump voter by any chance?
  • sonny73n - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    @The_Assimiator

    Are we not supposed to complain about the misleading pricing - one is Manufacturer’s SUGGESTED Retail Price and the ACTUAL price from the link provided by this article?
    If I want to build a cheap office system NOW, should I take this article into consideration despite the huge price differences?
    What’s special about the G5400 that its price has tripled due to “shortage”? At $182.68 currently from the link, is there no better CPU from Intel I can get for that price? Is Intel the only CPU manufacturer?
    What are you trying to achieve by calling us name? What our criticism to AT has to do with you?

    I’ve been restraining myself from criticizing AT too much. AT articles are slow to produce already. I wouldn’t want AT writers quit/fired then we’ll have less to read, even they’re written poorly.
  • kkilobyte - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    What would have made the most sense is not writing such an article in the first place, then.

    I take Ian's own words on this: "I'm a big advocate of building a system piece by piece with the best you can afford at the time".

    And at the (current) time, it seems that one simply cannot afford the G5400 for $64 (except maybe out of pure luck). This should have been, taken into account into the conclusion, or at least underlined.
  • AnnoyedGrunt - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Neither of these CPUs makes much sense. The G5400 isn't readily available (sold out on Newegg or only available from re-sellers for $100, as is the G5500 or G5600).

    Once you are spending $100, it makes much more sense to get the Ryzen 2200G for the same price that typically outperforms both of these (or only loses by a little to the G5400 in office type of tasks). The 2200G actually looks pretty decent as an IGP solution, and is a much better platform once you go to a dedicated GPU as well.

    I'd personally work a few extra hours and save up for the 2200G over either of these options.

    -AG
  • Valantar - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Despite all the complaints here of comparing products at very different price points (retail, not MSRP), I would still like to see a more complete test suite run on the overclocked 200GE, especially the gaming tests.

    Also, is iGPU overclocking possible on this chip, or are iGPU frequencies locked? It would also be very interesting for you to part out example builds of this vs. the G5400 and the Ryzen 3 2200G, to see the difference in actual system cost.
  • br83taylor - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Are those power figures correct? If you compare Ryzen 3 2200g for 20W and Ryzen 3 1300X at 58W. A third of the power but same 4C4T configuration.
  • Zoolook13 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    For what it's worth, in Sweden the prices match pretty well 695 SEK for a 220GE vs 759 SEK for a G5400.
  • Zoolook13 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Sorry that ended up in the wrong place, edit button ftw...
  • Irata - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Curious - which Retailer ?
  • Valantar - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    The difference in Norway is slightly larger, with 599NOK for the 200GE vs. 729 for the G5400 - but it's not in stock anywhere, so prices may be fictitious (or there's no supply at all). 200GE supply seems plentiful.
  • andrewaggb - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    I liked the article. I was interested in the 200GE's performance for some headless budget builds and now I know where it sits.

    I wouldn't use either of these chips on even a budget gaming build. Get a 2200g or i3 8100+ for gaming.
  • darb - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    On page 3, is "Uses might ask why we are not running Windows 10 x64 RS4, the latest major update" supposed to be "Users might ask why..."?
  • Stuka87 - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Under gaming with the World of Tanks results, it says GTX1080, but then also has an IGP column, and the IGP column is higher than everything else? Also, Encore engine was released last year, and WoT has been using it since April. So it is no longer "unreleased".
  • GreenReaper - Thursday, January 17, 2019 - link

    I think the idea is that it is "IGP"-level *settings*, run on the video card. It's a tad confusing, I agree.
  • just4U - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    I always find it fun to compare budget processors to yesteryear's high end to see where you land up.. It almost looks like this is in the range of a low end 4000 series i5 and a bit better than it's i3 variants. Hmm.. 2 cores though ugh. I'd probably want at least 4.
  • GreenReaper - Thursday, January 17, 2019 - link

    It's worth if you can possibly afford it. About the only other situation I see it making sense *not* to is if power or cooling is a major consideration (especially if hyperthreading works for you). My server is just fine on two cores, and that reduces its power and cooling requirements, which have a 35W limit.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    I sent you a tweet about the lables in the GTX1080 section and then realised I misread it. Deleted the tweet. Oh well. Good conclusion overall, very fair. Aligns perfectly with what I would do.

    Unfortunately, here (Germany) as well, the Intel CPUs are way overpriced. For a G5400 I can get a Ryzen 3 2200G. So it all kinda falls apart because of the weird CPU shortage.
  • Manch - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link

    Would this be good for a NAS?
  • perdomot - Saturday, January 19, 2019 - link

    How does the author of this article not know that the price of the G5400 is in the $120+ range? At that price, the 1300x would be the appropriate comparison and it clearly smokes the Intel cpu in the benches. The author needs a reprimand for this poor work.
  • mito0815 - Thursday, January 24, 2019 - link

    Oh ffs. Been a while since I was around, and OH WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, the AMD shilling and -fanboyism in the comments has become just as unbearable as I'd imagined. People, he set up two budget CPUs on a comparable level (AMD strong in GPU, Intel a tad bit stronger in CPU performance & clock) against each other...nothing more, nothing less. Store prices for Intel CPU's being so inflated isn't really Intel's fault now, is it? The intended stock prices are still very much comparable. By your logic, AMD would've not been quite the price/performance god you all worship during the mining GPU price explosion now, would it?

    But no, all you guys want is an article with some AMD CPU coming out on top, no matter how it's done. Get over yourselves. By the looks of it, while GPU is still a sore point with AMD, Ryzen 2 seems to look good so far. Wait for that and don't go all rampant now.
  • kkilobyte - Saturday, January 26, 2019 - link

    The article title starting with: "The $60 CPU question", it is not unreasonable 'fanboi-ism' to expect that the article is comparing CPUs costing, well, around $60.

    And the issue is not about Intel being guilty or not of the current high prices.

    The problem is that the article draws conclusions that simply don't match reality, precisely because it doesn't adress the current discrepancy between the street prices and the manufacturer's suggested one. It would have taken a single paragraph to explain that.

    My issue about the article is that, unlike what you are writing, it doesn't compare CPUs of similar (price) level. What it does is comparing CPUs of similar *theorical* price levels, but draws a conclusion as if those were the commonly seen street prices. This is dishonest and misleading.
  • watersb - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link

    Thanks for this review. I usually build low-end systems (PCs for family members), buy off-lease enterprise stuff (test servers), or used Apple or Lenovo gear (rebuilds and workstation projects).

    Budget gamng gear for the kids, then help them upgrade graohics card later, seems to be the one remaining path to "gaming enthusiast" hobby.

    Everyone else gets a Chromebook. And a Raspberry Pi.
  • Dr Hasan - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    Why are all products are old and prices too. Athlon 3000g is 50$ rayzen 2200g is less than 100$

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