AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Review: Zen, Meet Vega

Civilization VI AI Test

Civilization's AI test measures performance in a turn-based strategy game. As you can see, AMD's Ryzen 5 2400G really excels after some tuning, going so far as to beat Intel's Core i5-8400. Notably, a stock Ryzen 5 2400G also bests the Core i3-8100, which could be due in part to the Core i3's lack of Turbo Boost (Intel limits the chip to a static 3.6 GHz, while AMD's 2400G jumps up to 3.9 GHz).

The A10-9700 serves as a great reminder of how far AMD has come since navigating away from the Bulldozer architecture.

Civilization VI Graphics Test

If your eyes keep wandering over to that overclocked Ryzen 3 2200G, you aren't alone. AMD positions the 2200G for lower-resolution gaming, but we also experimented with the overclocked 2200G configuration and included its results at 1920x1080. We're focusing on Ryzen 5 2400G for this review. However, we plan to expand our test pool to include Intel's Pentium G4620 for our Ryzen 3 2200G coverage. The Pentium family badly needs a challenger, and Ryzen 3 2200G seems up to the task.

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Ryzen 5 2400G tops our 720p chart after some tuning, and the plucky 2200G isn't far behind. We averaged 63.1 FPS with the 2400G, representing a 12% speed-up over stock. Using Medium graphics settings for both sets of tests, the Ryzen 5 2400G surprisingly encountered more variance at stock settings during the 720p run than it did at 1080p. This reinforces our hypothesis that AMD needs to continue optimizing its graphics drivers. Tuning easily overcomes those hiccups though, and the 2400G tops our charts by a large margin.

Dota 2

Dota 2 was one of the first games to receive a patch with Zen-specific optimizations.

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Core i5-8400 and i3-8100 hit a graphics bottleneck during the 720p benchmark, while the Ryzen processors trail even after tuning. It is hard to call 104.3 FPS at 720p problematic, though.

AMD's overclocked Ryzen 5 2400G serves up 63.4 FPS at 1080p using medium-quality settings, yielding a smooth gaming experience.

Intel's UHD Graphics 630 engine and the A10-9700 are simply unplayable at 720p with these settings.

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