AMD Athlon 200GE Dual-Core APU Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The AMD Athlon 200GE 2-Core 4-Thread Processor is available now for just £39.99. If you’re in the US, that’s just $57.99. That’s pretty damn cheap, and you can see on Amazon “regularly bought together” that you can get the CPU, a motherboard and some RAM for just £124.46 in the UK or there’s a deal in the US for the CPU, motherboard and a PSU for $152.73. You could legitimately put a PC together, for around £250-300/$400-500.

Overview

When you compare this to the big CPUs of this generation, the 200GE doesn’t stack up well. It’s woefully underpowered, only has two cores, and gets a bit out of breath when you ask it to do anything really demanding like render video. However, it’s not built for people who want to do that sort of thing. When it comes down to it, it’s for a basic multimedia PC build. Chrome, Office, some Photoshop work, and some casual games are where it fits best.

Family

For a cheap first PC for the kids or a simple family computer that’s for keeping in touch with family, social media, homework etc, it’s hit that part of the market dead on. It’s exceptional value for money for those on a tight budget. Of course, it also appeals to those who simply do not need an 8-core monster gaming PC. Hard for some of you to understand, I’m sure, but there’s a big market for modest computers.

Should I Buy One?

At this price, you really can’t go wrong. I prefer the Ryzen 5 2200G for when I do budget builds, but it’s still twice the price of the 200GE and that’s not going to please many wallets. For a real entry-level CPU though, it’s pretty robust and I’m happy to see AMD keeping the budget ranges alive and kicking.