AMD Ryzen/Raven Ridge APU Gaming Review
IntroductionÂ
AMD’s APUs have always promised to be an affordable option for PC gamers, delivering more performance in their opposition each time they have released onto the market. Raven Ridge is AMD’s latest APU offering, though with it AMD has combined a stellar CPU design alongside their Radeon Graphics IP.Â
Combine this with AMD’s move to 14nm and their latest Vega GPU architecture, and we have a compelling single-chip offering. AMD’s Raven Ridge APU lineup offers the most CPU and GPU performance that AMD has ever delivered on a single-chip CPU/GPU combo, easily surpassing their last generation APU offerings.Â
In a time where GPUs are scarce, and prices are well over their MSRPs, many gamers are searching for a way to create startup systems on a budget, making the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G attractive options. Intel doesn’t offer any CPUs with comparable GPU performance, and AMD has pledged to support their AM4 socket for a while, giving gamers a good starting point for gaming and a clear upgrade path.Â
What we want to look into today is how well these APUs can handle some of PC gaming’s heavy hitters, titles that are demanding on hardware, popular amongst gamers and offer exciting new hardware features.Â
In this overview we will be looking at the following games:Â
– Assassin’s Creed: Origins
– Grand Theft Auto V
– Kingdom Come: Deliverance
– Middle Earth: Shadow of War
– Rainbow Six: Siege
– Total War: Warhammer II
– Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Gaming Performance – An Xbox One comparisonÂ
One of the most noteworthy things about AMD’s Raven Ridge series of APUs is how comparable they are to the AMD-powered SoC used in the Xbox One/Xbox One S, at least when looking at raw GPU compute performance. While each side has their advantages and disadvantages, it is undeniable that there is a similarity here.Â
Raven Ridge has the benefits of AMD’s new Zen CPU core designs, as well as increased CPU clock speeds, while the Xbox has an advantage when it comes to memory bandwidth, due to its 256-bit (quad-channel) memory bus and its 32MB of ESRAM on the unit’s SoC. AMD’s Ryzen 5 2400G offers more GPU performance than an Xbox One S, with the Ryzen 3 2200G lagging behind a little, though both of these APUs use AMD’s newer Vega GPU architecture. Â
What is interesting here is that integrated graphics on PC now offers console-like performance levels, giving Reven Ridge a serious amount of gaming potential. While PC games do not have the same levels of low-level optimisations as consoles, it will be fascinating to see if we can hit the same performance levels/resolution targets as an Xbox One.Â
  Â
 | Ryzen 3 2200G | Ryzen 5 2400G | Xbox One S |
CPU Socket | AM4 | AM4 | N/A |
Manufacturing Process | 14nm | 14nm | 16nm |
CPU Architecture | Zen | Zen | Custom Jaguar |
Cores/Threads | 4/4 | 4/8 | 8/8 |
CPU Base Clock | 3.5GHz | 3.6GHz | 1.75GHz |
CPU Boost Clock | 3.7GHz | 3.9GHz | N/A |
Memory Support | 2933MHz (DDR4) | 2933MHz (DDR4) | 2133MHz (DDR3) |
Memory Configuration | Dual Channel | Dual Channel | Quad Channel |
Memory Bandwidth | 46.9GB/s | 46.9GB/s | 68.3GB/s |
ESRAM (Bandwidth) | N/A | N/A | 32MB (218GB/s) |
iGPU | Vega | Vega | Custom GCN |
iGPU Stream Processors | 512 | 704 | 768 |
iGPUÂ Clock Speed | 1100MHz | 1240MHz | 914MHz |
GPU TFLOPS | 1.126 TFLOPS | 1.75 TFLOPS | 1.4 TFLOPS |
 Â