BY CHRISTIAN GUYTONThis month, we’re turning our heads to accelerated processing units. AMD is killing it at
the moment on the integrated graphics front, although Intel’s APUs—such as the Core i3-
9100—are still top-notch products. If you’re looking for a processor to power a budget build,
there are plenty of options on the market right now. The Intel versus AMD debate may rage
until the end of time, but AMD has given its budget Ryzen 3 3200G APU an extra competitor
in the frighteningly cheap Athlon 3000G. Can this affordable underdog take home the crown?Ryzen 3 3200G vs. Core i3-
vs. Athlon 3000G
Performance
Shockingly, the super-budget Athlon
doesn’t win this round. Granted, it’s
the only chip here with multithreading,
bringing its thread count to four;
tied with the other two, despite only
having two cores. It can’t quite match
the higher frequencies and superior
integrated graphics of the other two.
The i3-9100 does well—in CPU-bound
tests it outpaces the Ryzen 3 3200G by
a small margin (less than 10 percent).
However, the 3200G’s integrated
graphics are better suited to low-end
gaming than the i3-9100. It’s a case
of Radeon Vega 8 against Intel UHD
630, and AMD has a slight edge when
rendering graphics in real time.
Neither chip is going to perform
outstandingly without a discrete GPU,
but the 3200G can carry most games
in 720p and even some at 1080p. In our
recent budget build, we saw the 3200G
play Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p
ultra, with a frame rate almost triple
that of the i3-9100. There’s no contest
in terms of graphical power; the Intel
chip is a bit older than the Ryzen, too,
utilizing the same integrated graphics
as the older i3-8100. So, we lean
toward AMD, but once desktop models
of Intel CPUs featuring the Iris Plus
graphics arrive, our tune may change.Winner: Ryzen 3 3200GValue
This is tough. In terms of baseline
pricing, the Athlon 3000G should win
this round; it’s $50, for crying out
loud. There’s no buying integrated
graphics processors with that kind of
money, other than the old Celeron and
Pentium APUs from Intel that aren’t
supported on current-gen mobos. The
3000G does sit beneath AMD’s other
APUs in terms of processing power
and features, though. The Intel Core
i3-9100 offers a maximum of 16 PCIe
lanes and 50 percent more cache
memory, while the Ryzen 3 3200G has
the fastest memory support: 2,933MHz
as opposed to the 9100’s 2,400MHz and
the 3000G’s 2,667MHz.
All three come with an air cooler
unit, although Intel’s included coolers
aren’t that impressive. The AMD
chips come with the excellent Wraith
coolers, which are a good addition to
improve the value. The i3-9100 is the
most expensive chip by far, costing
$165 at the time of writing; more than
triple the price of the Athlon 3000G.
Meanwhile, the 3200G costs an even
$100, which is a perfectly reasonable
amount to spend on an APU, but at
double the price, it doesn’t double the
baseline performance of the Athlon, so
we’re giving the win here to the 3000G.Winner: Athlon 3000GEfficiency
APUs tend to have broadly comparable
power consumption, with the graphics
demanding a bit more juice than
conventional CPUs. The Ryzen 3 3200G
and Core i3-9100 are both rated for a
TDP of 65W, the same as more powerful
chips without integrated graphics,
such as the Ryzen 5 3600. But Intel
and AMD calculate TDP differently, so
without getting too deep into the math,
the Ryzen chip likely uses slightly less
power. The Athlon 3000G, however,
has a far lower default TDP of 35W.
Looking at clock speeds, the Ryzen
and Core both exceed the Athlon, but
when comparing base clocks against
TDP, the 3000G comes out on top.
Core processors still use less power
than many other components (such
as GPUs), and overclocking means
that power consumption in APUs is
potentially variable. None of these
chips have brilliant overclocking
potential anyway, so the winner here is
the 3000G. Its Vega 3 graphics can give
Intel’s UHD 630 a run for its money,
and utilizing SMT means it packs the
same number of threads as the other
chips without overburdening your
power consumption. If you’re looking
to build a low-power system, this is
one of the best APUs around.Winner: Athlon 3000GROUND 1 ROUND 2 ROUND 3
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