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Far Cry Primal, Grand Theft Auto & The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Far Cry Primal

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We were a bit surprised to see Far Cry Primal in AMD's list of suggested benchmarks, so we decided to give it a shot using the lowest-quality settings possible. As it turns out, the game is playable on Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G processors at 720p. However, all of our contenders run into trouble at 1080p.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V finds the Core i5-8400 averaging a ridiculous 166.7 FPS at 720p. This result is so far from our expectations that we re-tested using several measurement utilities to confirm. We're still not sure how to explain the outcome.

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Our results at 720p emphasize why you should consider average and minimum frame rates incomplete without frame time data. Even though the averages show most processors offering great performance, frame time plots reveal nasty-looking outliers from several configurations. A second chart with the Core i3-8100 and -7100 removed show Ryzen 5 2400G providing a nice, flat line of frame times through our 720p benchmark. But the Core i5-8400 and its abnormally-high average runs into several frame time spikes that manifest as visible stuttering. We even reproduced those results several times.

The Core i5-8400 oddly doesn't experience the same variance at 1080p, and neither do the Core i3 models. We're testing with a relatively new test image to accommodate Raven Ridge, so there's still some troubleshooting to do.

Regardless, the Ryzen 5 2400G fares well at 720p. And although it isn't stellar at 1920x1080, it's still playable.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt plays surprisingly well on most systems (except the A10-9700 and UHD Graphics 630 engine, of course).

Ryzen 5 2400G takes the lead at both resolutions after applying our overclock. All of the systems suffer a frame time spike at the same point during our test corresponding to a scene transition.

We can confidently recommend the Ryzen 5 2400G for 1080p gaming at low settings in The Witcher 3. The game plays really well.

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Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

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89 Comments Comment from the forums

InvalidError

Looking at Zeppelin and Raven dies side by side, proportionally, Raven seems to be spending a whole lot more die area on glue logic than Zeppelin did. Since the IGP takes the place of the second CCX, I seriously doubt its presence has anything to do with the removal of 8x PCIe lanes. Since PCIe x8 vs x16 still makes very little difference on modern GPUs where you're CPU-bound long before PCIe bandwidth becomes a significant concern, AMD likely figured that nearly nobody is going to pair a sufficiently powerful GPU with a 2200G/2400G for PCIe x8 to matter.
Reply
Olle P

1. Why did you use 32GB RAM for the Coffee Lake CPUs instead of the very same RAM used for the other CPUs?

2. In the memory access tests I feel to see the relevance of comparing to higher teer Ryzen/ThreadRipper. Would rather see comparison to the four core Ryzens.

3. Why not also test overclocking with the Stealth cooler? (Works okay for Ryzen 3!)

4. Your comments about Coffee Lake on the last page:
"Their locked multipliers ... hurt their value proposition...
... a half-hearted attempt to court power users with an unlocked K-series Core i3, ... it requires a Z-series chipset..."As of right now all Coffee Lake CPUs require a Z-series chipset, so that's not an added cost for overclocking. I'd say a locked multiplier combined with the demand for a costly motherboard is even worse. (This is suppsed to change soon though.)
Reply
AgentLozen

Tom's must think highly of this APU to give it the Editor's Choice award. It seems to be your best bet for an extremely limited budget.

I totally understand if you only have a few hundred dollars to build your PC with and you desperately want to get in on some master race action. That's the situation where the 2400G shines brightest. But the benchmarks show that games typically don't run well on this chip. They DO work under the right circumstances, but GTAV isn't as fun to play at low settings.

Buying a pre-built PC from a boutique with a GeForce 1050Ti in it will make your experience noticeably better if you can swing the price.
Reply
akamateau

What most writers and critics of integrated graphics processors such as AMD's APU or Intel iGP all seem to forget, is not EVERYONE in the world has a disposable or discretionary income equal to that of the United States, Europe, Japan etc. Not everyone can afford bleeding edge gaming PC's or laptops. Food, housing and clothing must come first for 80% of the population of the world.

An APU can grant anyone who can afford at least a decent basic APU the enjoyment of playing most computer games. The visual quality of these games may not be up to the arrogantly high standards of most western gamers, but then again these same folks who are happy to have an APU also can not barely afford a 750p crt monitor much less a 4k flat screen.

This simple idea is huge not only for the laptop and pc market but especially game developers who can only expect to see an expansion of their Total Addressable Market. And that is good for everybody as broader markets help reduce the cost of development.

This in fact was the whole point behind AMD's release of Mantle and Microsoft and The Kronos Group's release of DX12 and Vulkan respectively.

Today's AMD APU has all of the power of a GPU Add In Board of not more than a several years back.
Reply
Dark Lord of Tech

Graphics still too weak , a card is still needed.
Reply
Blas

"Meanwhile, every AMD CPU is overclockable on every Socket AM4-equipped motherboard" (in the last page)
That is not correct, afaik, not for A320 chipsets. It is for B350 and X370, though.
Reply
salgado18

"with a GeForce 1050Ti in it will make your experience noticeably better if you can swing the price."
"a card is still needed"

You do realize that these CPUs have an integrated graphics chip as strong as a GT 1030, right? And that you are comparing a ~$90 GPU to a ~$220 GPU?

If you can swing the price, grab a GTX 1080ti already, and let us mITX/poor/HTPC builders enjoy Witcher 3 in 1080p for a fraction of the price ;)
Reply
InvalidError

20700012 said:
but then again these same folks who are happy to have an APU also can not barely afford a 750p crt monitor much less a 4k flat screen.
When 1080p displays are available for as little as $80, there isn't much point in talking about 720p displays. I'm not even sure I can still buy one of those even if I wanted to unless I shopped used. (But then I could also shop for used 1080p displays and likely find one for less than $50.)

The price of 4k TVs is coming down nicely, I periodically see some 40+" models with HDR listed for as little as $300, cheaper than most monitors beyond 1080p.

20700022 said:
Graphics still too weak , a card is still needed.
Depends for who, not everyone is hell-bent on playing everything at 4k Ultra 120fps 0.1% lows. Once the early firmware/driver bugs get sorted out, it'll be good enough for people who aren't interested in shelling out ~$200 for a 1050/1050Ti alone or $300+ for anything beyond that. If your CPU+GPU budget is only $200, that only buys you a $100 CPU and GT1030 which is worse than Vega 11 stock.

If my current PC had a catastrophic failure and I had to rebuild in a pinch, I'd probably go with the 2400G instead of paying a grossly inflated price for a 1050 or better.
Reply
Istarion

People come here expecting to find an overclockeable 4 core with a 1080-like performance for 160$. And a good cooler. I'd love to be so optimistic :D

Summarizing: we are saving around 50-100$ for the same low-end performance. That's 25% to 40% cheaper. What are we complaining about?!? I'd be partying right now if that happened in high-end too!!! 300$ for a 1080...

All those comments saying "too weak", or "isn't fun to play at low settings", seriously, travel around the globe or just open your mind, there's poor people in 90% of the world, do you think they'll buy a frakking 1080 and a 8700k?!?

And there's even non-poor people that doesn't care about good graphics! Go figure!
Otherwise, why there are pixel graphics games all over the place? Or unoptimized/breaking early access games??

I have a high-end pc and still lower fps to minimum for competitive play, so I won't see any difference between a 1080Ti vs a 1070 (250 vs 170fps, who's gonna see that, my cat?!? No 'cause my monitor is not fast enough!).
Reply
rush21hit

As a cyber cafe owner, I would love to replace my old A5400s to the lower R3.

Except that the DDR4 sticks went crazy expensive over here. FML
Reply