The Core i5-8400 testbed used an Asus Prime Z370-A motherboard, while the AMD system uses a B350I Pro AC. And that's okay.What do you get from 704 streaming processors clocked at 1250MHz, sharing system RAM with a 4-core/8-thread Ryzen CPU?
I really wish AMD could have stuffed in something closer to 16 CUs, and even better would have been some dedicated HBM2 for the APU, but then we'd likely be talking about a far more expensive part.While it took nearly a year for AMD to go from Ryzen CPUs to Ryzen APUs, the results are basically what you'd expect. So for the purposes of the APUs, my primary focus is going to be on the integrated graphics performance.Ultimately, if you're serious about playing the latest games, you should simply plan on buying some form of dedicated graphics. That's still potentially eight percent faster than stock, but nothing really noteworthy. For the Ryzen APUs, there's only a single CCX, and a maximum of 4MB of L3 cache. Image 6 of 12. That simplifies some aspects of multi-core operation—there are no cross-CCX latencies to worry about—but the reduced L3 cache size may at times be a factor.I don't have full overclocking results ready just yet, but on the CPU front, the chip is mostly tapped out—I encountered stability issues beyond 3.9GHz with the stock cooler on my sample. 7th generation Core i5’s, like the Core i5-7400, top out at 3.5GHz and offer just four cores. It's worth pointing out that the RAM is extremely high-end relative to the rest of the system, and it's designed to show the integrated graphics in the best possible light. Please refresh the page and try again.After the tour de force of the Ryzen processor rollout last year, many had high hopes for the future Ryzen APUs. The Ryzen 5 2400G calls it "Vega 11," which is a Vega core with 11 enabled CUs (Compute Units), each of which includes 64 streaming processors (aka GPU cores).
All test systems use fast DDR4-3200 memory to provide optimal performance, with M.2 NVMe SSD storage for the OS and applications, and games stored on a large 2TB SATA SSD as a secondary drive.Shifting over to the non-gaming benchmarks, many of the tests show a virtual tie between the 2400G and the 1500X.
Our preferred resolution for these results was 1080p, but only if the game was capable of running on Vega 11 at a 30fps minimum threshold. Image 2 of 12. The new APU’s CPU + GPU topology is shown below:Watching the Core i5-8400’s UHD 630 try to take on Vega 11 was like watching a time-traveling Uwe Boll trying to box Muhammed Ali in his prime. Needless to say, you don't need any crazy cooling setup to keep things running within an acceptable temperature range, and the included Spire cooler that the Ryzen APUs ship with is more than sufficient.Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.Overall, the 2400G and 1500X are effectively tied, with a few small variations in the individual tests. If your requirements are less demanding, lighter fare like Dota 2, CS:GO, Overwatch, and more are certainly playable, and in retrospect I probably should have targeted 1600x900 at low quality instead of 1080p medium. Image 9 of 12. For now, I've limited the results to budget dedicated graphics cards at the GTX 1050 Ti/RX 560 level and below, and I'm working to generate some numbers for a Core i5-8400 using it's HD Graphics 630 integrated GPU.