The AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Review: Vega Barrels Into Budget Gaming

Overclocking

Overclocking with AMD's Ryzen Master utility is simple. Using its various dials, the Zen cores in our Ryzen 3 readily jumped up to 3.9 GHz with a 1.3725V Vcore setting. We also adjusted the VDDCR SoC voltage, a single rail that feeds the uncore and graphics domains, to 1.25V. This allowed us to dial in an easy 1400 MHz graphics clock rate (though we've already heard of Tom's Hardware readers hitting 1475 MHz). We briefly pushed a bit higher to 1450 MHz, but that put us over AMD's recommended 1.25V SoC voltage, so we pulled back to preserve our sample for future testing.

We tested our stock configuration with the supported DDR4-2933 (single-rank, dual-DIMM), and then overclocked to DDR4-3200 with 14-14-14-34 timings.

Our test platform employs a Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 cooler to cope with the thermal challenges presented by Raven Ridge's unique design (we measured 72°C using AIDA64's CPU/GPU stress test). In the past, we've overclocked Summit Ridge-based samples using AMD's bundled Wraith Spire heat sink and fan. But the Radeon Vega graphics engine adds a bit more thermal stress to the equation, so plan on buying a better cooler for overclocking.

We tested gaming at 1280x720 and 1920x1080. As you can see in the screenshot above, the graphics subsystem consumes 1GB of system memory at stock settings, but you can allocate more through the BIOS' UMA frame buffer setting. Of course, this does eat into available system RAM. The operating system also dynamically shares unused system memory with the GPU ("Shared GPU Memory" in the task manager screenshot above is RAM that Windows provisions based on workload). By default, the operating system limits this shared pool to half of the system memory's total capacity.

AMD says the benefit of a larger UMA frame buffer is evident in the ability to specify higher levels of detail. Just don't expect faster frame rates at 1080p. This should be an interesting setting to experiment with. Right out of the gate, AMD says that a user with 16GB of DDR4 would benefit from assigning 4GB to the graphics engine.

A Quick Look At Memory Latency

We ran some benchmarks on Raven Ridge's cache hierarchy in our Ryzen 5 2400G review and noticed latency improvements attributable to AMD's architectural tweaks. Of course, those improvements were made possible by paring back capacity, so trade-offs had to be made.

Our tests include several types of data access to measure latency, which we explained in AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X Game Mode, Benchmarked.

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As a result of the new single-CCX design (and other tweaks), Ryzen 5 2400G achieves the lowest L2 and L3 cache latency seen from a Ryzen CPU. AMD's Ryzen 3 2200G trails its counterpart, but also beats the other Ryzen models handily in most access patterns.

Test Methodology & Systems

AMD's Raven Ridge performs best with Windows 10 Build 1709, so we fully updated our test systems before benchmarking.

The latest Windows build adds Multi-Plane Overlay, providing a more efficient way of rendering video and compositing 2D surfaces. It also saves power by alpha-blending accelerated surfaces and culling the ones you cannot see. That major change means you can only compare these test results to our previous Raven Ridge review. 

AMD sent along the mini-ITX Gigabyte AB350N Gaming WiFi motherboard and a 2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 memory kit. We used the bundled Wraith Stealth cooler for testing applications and games at stock settings, then switched over to the aforementioned Noctua cooler for overclocking.

Test Systems

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