- You guys have been requesting
that I test for the 3400G
instead of going with a typical review on a motherboard.
Why don't I test it with the ASRock A300 DeskMini?
Now this is a unit that came in
and I absolutely loved it for its form factor.
I believe it really extracts
the most potential out of an APU.
Small form factor, the thing is literally
like the size on my hand
and you can get some decent performance out of it.
If you guys haven't seen that review
I'll put the link up here for you.
But today we're going to be updating the BIOS on this
because you will need to update the BIOS
for the 3400G in order to get it working.
And then testing that against the 2400G
in this little tight unit here.
Now I am limited to SODIMM memory
which is some real bottom of the barrel stuff.
And I only managed to get this to 2666MHz
at CL15 timings.
Though what those timings,
what is the difference between these two CPU's
and how are they going to perform in games
since the Ryzen 3400G now sports Zen Plus CPU cores
which of course are better than the 1000 series CPU cores
which they put in the Ryzen 2200G and 2400G.
And then this generation with the Ryzen 3000 chips,
typically on the 3600 you've got
brand new Zen 2 CPU cores
which are seven nanometer.
But on the 3400G and on the 3200G
you have the Zen Plus 12 nanometer cores.
And couple that with the Vega 11 graphics
on the 2400 and 3400G
you now have higher boost clocks.
Though how much of a difference will that make in games?
Let's test this thing out and see what the verdict is.
♪ I wish that I was a mad man ♪
♪ So that maybe I ♪
So with the DeskMini A300
if you guys wish to use a Ryzen 2400G
or 2200G or 3400G or 3200G
inside this with the stock cooler
then you are going to actually need the Wraith Stealth
due to the height and the mounting.
The Wraith Spire, which comes included with the 3400G,
won't fit even though that weighs in at 450 grams roughly
and the Stealth weighs in at 300 grams
it will provide better cooling performance
but if you want to save some money
and since the A300 itself, the bare bones,
only comes at 150 bucks
it is a good option to save money
and use something like the Wraith Stealth.
Alls you have to do is take off this plastic cover
and then apply a bit of force
and you'll be able to fit it inside, no dramas.
Now in terms of testing out the temperatures
between both these CPUs
we had the 2400G running at roughly 86 Watts from the wall
in a stress test, these are at the same memory speeds.
And then we used, for the 3400G,
it was coming in at 97 Watts from the wall.
The hardware monitor readout
was showing about 26 Watts versus 30 Watts.
And the temperatures were coming in about
86 degrees on the 2400G versus 85 degrees on the 3400G.
However keep in mind the noise on the Wraith Stealth
did get a bit noisier for the 3400G.
I'll let you guys take a quick listen.
(fan spinning)
As for the 2400G that was pretty whisper quiet
I'll let you guys have a listen to that quickly too.
(fan spinning)
So now looking at CPU performance
for these tests I just ran both these CPU's out of the box
and considering it's with the A300
we are limited by the cooler,
we're also limited by the motherboard's VRM
and of course we are limited by the power supply included,
which I believe is only just above 100 Watts.
So the fact that we're already using that wattage
out of the wall on a stress test
means that we don't really want to push this
a whole lot more.
But here's where the 3400G does pull ahead.
It's topping out around 3.9GHz all cores out of the box
versus about 3.6GHz all cores on the 2400G.
This enabled it to get a better Cinebench R20 score
1862 points versus 1633.
Then on the single core
we did get a better score of 401 versus 380.
V-Ray on the CPU side didn't see much of a difference at all
we only shaved off nine seconds
and then moving over to the other side
since this does use AVX2
so I'm guess the difference there
wouldn't be a whole lot once it puts out that heat.
And as we said before, speaking of that overclocking
you wouldn't really want to bother
when you're already pretty much topping out
the cooler on the motherboard
and the power supply included.
So V-Ray, the GPU side of things,
saw pretty much the same score.
And then moving over to Geek Bench
we did see some higher numbers,
actually significantly higher numbers,
on the multi core score for the 3400G.
And then on the single core, we got a boost there too.
So if you're thinking about the 2400G versus the 3400G,
just for raw CPU performance out of the box,
then the 3400G definitely has an advantage.
Though what about gaming?
And this is probably one of the most important things.
If you're getting this,
you want to be like "Hey, I want such a small form factor.
"And I also wouldn't mind playing some games at 1080p
"or even 720p and getting some decent fps."
So I decided to pull up three of the top five games
played on Steam, first being "GTA 5".
Now this actually couldn't handle it at 1080p
on the lower settings
but dropping things down to 720p
did see a boost for the 3400G
where it got 66 average fps versus 58.
And then the 1% Lows were better
and also the 0.1% Lows were better.
So this was a clear victory for the 3400G in this title.
Though turning things over to "CS:GO"
we saw at 1080p lower settings
on the workshop benchmark
we got both 110 fps verses 111
and then eight and seven 0.1 and 1% Lows.
So there was virtually no difference in "CS:GO".
And then going over and playing some multi-player,
because I saw the 1% and 0.1% Lows
were really bad in this benchmark,
it wasn't such a big thing in "Dust II".
We got a 115 average fps, 55 1% Lows and the 0.1 Lows
were actually consistently low at 14.
So the APU was struggling a little bit in "CS:GO"
to get a perfectly smooth experience.
But going over to "Dota 2", 1080p on the lower settings,
with a 100% render scale saw us get
a pretty much exact same results,
just like "CS:GO" of a 105 average fps versus 105,
and then the 1% and 0.1% Lows were very similar too.
And this game does pretty much get those similar 0.1% Lows
regardless of what GPU you are doing
even on high-end systems the 0.1% Lows
do go down to these levels
so it's nothing to worry about.
But what we can see here
is that the APU, depending on the title,
3400G can do a lot better.
So now running all these tests with the 3400G
leaves me at a clear cut recommendation
and that is if you're going to get the APU on this part
I'd be getting it more so for
the CPU performance out of the box
than the 2400G.
I think the extra money,
if you're going to try and get
that extra graphical performance,
you'll then have to go spend more money
on things like faster SODIMM memory,
which unfortunately for SODIMM
the higher you go in speeds
the difference between that and desktop DDR4 memory
starts to blow up out of control.
Just checking out some Kingston 2666MHz memory
it's coming in at $75 for 16GB
which is great value.
But then if we start stepping it up to 2933
and then of course 3200
the price increase simply doesn't justify
the performance gains that you're going to get
on this memory.
The one thing I will point out
is that the 3400G in the A300
managed to get the memory up to 2866MHz at CL17
although it didn't make virtually no difference
in the gaming performance versus 2666,
which is what my 2400G topped out on
so we do have a better integrated memory controller
on the 3400G versus the 2400G.
But in saying all that,
the 3400G it does have better CPU performance,
it does have a higher boost clock in the Vega 11 graphics,
so it will do a better job,
that's if you can extract the performance out of it.
So I guess this would best suit someone
who maybe wants to get off the B450 motherboard
with BIOS flashback
and then use this as a bridging gap
between them getting this
and say a 3600 in the future
and maybe a dedicated graphics card.
But in terms of coupling this with a A300,
I'd actually prefer after doing today's test
to either get a 2200G, which is only coming in at $80,
or get a 2400G which is coming in a bit cheaper
and then go out and get 16GB of SODIMM memory
and just have happy days.
Me personally, I feel like with the APU's
if AMD can release Zen 2 seven nanometer CPU cores
and then the Navi GPU portion together
then you would have an absolute winning combo
on your hands with the APUs.
So I can't wait for that day
but who knows when that's coming.
But in terms of doing my testing here today
it didn't make a whole lot of sense
to go out and get a 3400G over a 2400G
and spend more money on an A300 DeskMini.
And that's because the 2400G includes the Wraith Stealth
versus the 3400G which includes the Wraith Spire,
and as we said in the intro,
the A300 DeskMini will fit the Wraith Stealth.
So you're getting a bit of added value
by going with the 2400G for this particular setup,
coupled with limitations of SODIMM memory
being more expensive for the speeds
than the desktop counterparts.
Though if you're going to be using this APU as a bridge gap
between you getting a better CPU and dedicated GPU later on
then it does make sense to couple it with a B450 motherboard
and use it as a stop gap measure
until you can afford better hardware.
Or of course, if you're building a mini ITX rig
and you can utilize some desktop DDR4 memory.
But with that aside, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did, then be sure to hit that like button.
Also let us know in the comments section below
if there's any more tests you want to see,
or what do you think about the 2400G versus the 3400G.
Love reading your thoughts and opinions as always.
And I'll catch you in another tech video very soon.
Peace out for now.
Bye.
♪ Ain't nobody else ♪
♪ Found someone ♪
♪ Ain't nobody else ♪
♪ And I ain't letting you go ♪
♪ Ain't nobody else ♪
♪ Found someone ♪
♪ Ain't nobody else ♪
♪ And I ain't letting you go ♪