- Jan 1, 2011
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In short: the Vega 11 graphics in the 2400G trades blows with low end discreet graphics like the Geforce GT 1030, trounces Intel's HD Graphics 630, and the 2200G's Vega 8 graphics isn't too far behind. Also crushes AMD's last APU and Bulldozer's "swan song", the A12-9800.
In fact, looking just at graphics and game performance, the 2200G looks like better bang for your buck if you're aiming to spend the absolute least amount you can on a system and still have it viable for current games at low settings.
Seems to me that Ryzen with Vega graphics has arrived at both the most opportune and least opportune moment. Most opportune due to inflated discreet GPU prices at the moment, making a low cost alternative all the more appealing. Least opportune due to inflated memory prices, especially since these chips' performance scales directly with memory speed all the way up to 3200 MHz. You may be saving money by foregoing a dGPU, but you may just end up spending that money on faster RAM.
Also worth mentioning is the price and performance comparison to consoles, even though the video doesn't touch on this. The Vega 11 graphics has 1 less compute unit (64 less stream processors) than the original Xbox One/Xbox One S, but the higher clock speed and more modern Vega architecture should help it close the performance gap (1250 MHz for Vega 11 vs 914 MHz for the Xbox One S). And of course, 4 Ryzen cores are going to bury the consoles' 8 Jaguar-based cores, with or without SMT. But the Xbox One S just costs $280 USD right now, and the PS4 Slim costs $300. Ryzen w/ Vega may be a great value specific to the PC CPU and GPU market, but when you factor in the cost of the other components, especially RAM and a blu-ray drive (if like me you'd want to use this as a living room media center that can also game), a Windows license, and peripherals for gaming, you'd probably be pushing the price into the $400-500 range, at which point you might as well just buy a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X for massively improved graphics performance. Consoles right now are just a really good value proposition in comparison to budget PCs for gaming, even with their CPU Achilles heel, and I don't think Ryzen w/ Vega Graphics does much to change this.
Anyone planning on picking one of these up?
Edit: It's worse than I thought. I picked out parts to go with a 2400G. Only 2 4GB sticks of DDR4. No disc drive. Ended up with with a shopping cart total of $594. In no way are custom built PCs viable as a price alternative for consoles, when you can just pick up a PS4 Slim for $300 or an Xbox One X for $500 right now...
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