AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Processor With Vega Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Ryzen 3 2200G With Vega is launching today with the aim of eventually replacing the Ryzen 3 1200. Of course, that makes sense since it’s starting at $10 less, yet features better CPU performance and what works out as a free built-in GPU. The 2200G should be in most major retailers now for just $99/£99.

Overview

The enthusiast in me can stay in his cave of 4K gaming and VR today because the sensible part of me is super excited about this budget CPU beast. To the high-end GPU loving gamers out there, it’s likely of little concern to you, but it was never meant to be. However, there’s a huge market out there for affordable systems, and few products to fill it. GPU prices are bonkers thanks to mining, and so much focus has been on high-end CPUs and high prices to match.

Bang for Buck

For $100 you get a quad-core CPU with a punchy iGPU built in. That’s cheaper than just about any CPU and GPU combination I can think of without digging through parts bins at computer fairs for 2nd hand hardware. Not only that, but it comes bundled with a cooler, it works with any AM4 motherboard, supports JEDEC DDR4-2933 right out of the box (the fastest of any consumer CPU to date!).

But Can It…

As you’ve seen, the performance is pretty great for the price. It’s not record-breaking, but it’s what I would call “more than enough” for most day-to-day PC tasks. It’ll get some gaming done in a pinch if required, it’ll multitask with ease, and it feels fast and responsive thanks to Precision Boost 2 delivering on-the-fly performance boosts with ease.

Overclocking on Stock Cooler?

That’s right, we used the stock cooler for all of these tests today. AMD has really improved the design quite a lot and it shows. I was able to push to 3.9 GHz on the CPU, and 1525 MHz on the GPU cores with ease, and still didn’t hit above 60c. I’ve even heard some samples are hitting 4 GHz and up to 1600 MHz on stock too, so that’s very promising. Perhaps we’ll get an affordable water cooler on this and try to push it harder in future testing. However, the power requirements are quite low on this CPU, so you may never need to upgrade the cooler anyway, which is fantastic. That’s right, I just recommended a stock cooler, it happened.

Should I Buy One

If you’re building an affordable system for a bit of casual gaming, something for the office, a family computer, or anything like that, it’s a no-brainer. We think it would be great for a multimedia system, emulator rig, or small form factor PC too, so there’s plenty of options. If you’re building a system with a dedicated GPU, then maybe look into the more appropriate Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 ranges though.

Pros

• An impressive evolution of the APU
• Punchy CPU for day-to-day tasks
• 25-30 FPS gaming at 1080p with no dGPU
• Low power requirements
• Cheaper and more powerful than the Ryzen 3 1200 it replaces
• Excellent thermal performance on stock cooler
• Can be overclocked with ease
• Can be overclocked on stock cooler
• Very competitive price
• Great for budget and SFF builds
• GPU and CPU Cores can be overclocked independently
• Supports high-speed memory

Cons

• Memory performance has a huge impact on overall system performance due to the nature of this CPUs design, we strongly recommend using 2933-3200 memory.

Neutral

• Only supports 8x PCIe not 16x, but that’s unlikely to be of concern for any GPU that would likely ever be paired with a budget CPU.
• Can be a little slow for CPU heavy tasks, but that’s to be expected at this price range