Tom's Hardware Verdict

The Athlon 200GE is a solid value, given its price point. But there are obvious trade-offs you'll have to accept after buying such an inexpensive CPU. Its biggest shortcomings are apparent in lightly-threaded workloads. Fortunately, unofficial overclocking, currently enabled on a handful of motherboards, helps improve the 200GE's benchmark results.

Reasons to buy

+
Attractive price
+
Comes with a thermal solution
+
Overclocking is possible, though unsupported

Reasons to avoid

-
Graphics engine and memory can't be overclocked
-
Weak single-threaded performance

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Return of the Athlon

The Athlon 200GE is built using the same Zen architecture found in AMD's popular Ryzen processors, providing a much-needed performance upgrade over the lackluster Bristol Ridge line-up. Given its low price, we shouldn't have been surprised that AMD locked the 200GE's multiplier, preventing easy overclocking. But its efforts proved superficial: recently, several motherboard manufacturers released BIOS updates that unlocked the 200GE's fixed ratio. All of the sudden, this ultra-affordable chip became a little more interesting to enthusiasts shopping for a bargain.

Officially, AMD maintains that the 200GE is a locked processor and points us to motherboard manufacturers for answers on any policy changes. In other words, for now, overclocking the Athlon 200GE is game-on. Better still, the 35W chip's stock thermal solution is perfectly ample for a bit of extracurricular tuning. Where we might not have been interested in the 200GE previously, the CPU is a far more impressive value with overclocking as an option.

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Row 0 - Cell 0	Athlon 200GE	Pentium Gold G5600	Pentium Gold G5400	Ryzen 3 1300X	Ryzen 3 2200G	Ryzen 5 2400G
TDP	35W	54W	54W	65W	65W	65W
Architecture	Zen	Coffee Lake	Coffee Lake	Zen	Zen	Zen
Process	14nm	14nm++	14nm++	14nm	14nm	14nm
Cores / Threads	2 / 4	2 / 4	2 / 4	4 /4	4 / 4	4 / 8
Frequency Base / Boost	3.2 / -	3.9 / -	3.7 / -	3.5 / 3.7	3.5 / 3.7	3.6 / 3.9
Memory Speed	DDR4-2667	DDR4-2400	DDR4-2400	DDR4-2667	DDR4-2933	DDR4-2933
Memory Controller	Dual-Channel	Dual-Channel	Dual-Channel	Dual-Channel	Dual-Channel	Dual-Channel
Cache (L3)	4MB	4MB	4MB	8MB	4MB	4MB
Integrated Graphics	Radeon Vega 3 (3 CU)	UHD Graphics 630	UHD Graphics 610	No	Radeon Vega 8 (8 CU)	Radeon Vega 11 (11 CU)
Unlocked Multiplier	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
MSRP	$55	$86	$64	$124	$99	$160

Recently, motherboard firmware updates from MSI and Gigabyte made it possible to overclock the Athlon 200GE. These are the only updates available built on AMD's underlying AGESA 1.0.0.6 code. AGESA, or AMD Generic Encapsulated System Architecture, is a bootstrap protocol that initializes processor cores, memory, and the Infinity Fabric. Currently, we assume that the unlocked multiplier is a result of the new AGESA code, though we don't have confirmation. We'll have to wait for updates from other manufacturers for more evidence.

This new Athlon processor like features the same underlying design as AMD's Ryzen 3 2200G and 2400G processors, albeit with a pared-down feature set that allows the company to offload Raven Ridge dies that suffered defects during the manufacturing process. Similar to the aforementioned Ryzen 3s, the Athlon 200GE comes with 4MB of L3 cache. It also accelerates the AVX instruction set, unlike Intel's Pentium and Celeron CPUs.

Naturally, the new Athlons aren't performance-oriented processors. Instead, AMD says they're ideal for basic computing tasks like Web browsing, word processing, and low-end gaming. The idea here is that you don't need to pair the Athlon 200GE with a discrete graphics card. Its three Vega CUs, with 64 Stream processors each, come together in a very entry-level GPU. The Ryzen 3 2200G's eight CUs are far more capable. But AMD claims its Athlon 200GE is still capable of playable frame rates at 720p in eSports games. The experience it enables is helped along by FreeSync support, so long as you own a compatible monitor.