In an unexpected flip of occasions, it’s now feasible to overclock the otherwise-locked Athlon 200GE processor that currently sits because the least high-priced Zen-based chip you can purchase, promoting for approximately $55. In what seems to be a slip up via MSI, about two weeks in the past the component maker launched a brand new BIOS for their full variety of AM4 motherboards to include assist version 1.0.Zero.6 of AMD’s Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture, in any other case referred to as AGESA.

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This modern day version improves memory support by way of enhancing overclocking and compatibility, it also adds a virtualization-associated characteristic that enables the capability to manually assign PCIe images cards inside IOMMU groups.

Improved memory aid is top notch, of direction, but nowadays we’re exploring Athlon 200GE overclocking which has been inadvertently enabled across MSI's AM4 motherboard lineup.

We’ve tried a handful of Asrock B350 and B450 boards, however none enabled 200GE overclocking. However, all MSI AM4 boards do, and we've showed this ourselves from price range B350 forums proper as much as the higher-stop B450 fashions such as the Gaming Pro Carbon, as an instance. We've yet to try additional Asus or Gigabyte boards, we're going to supply them a shot soon but to date reports are only coming in from MSI proprietors. Surely, MSI has made a mistake here, however a glad accident for price range fanatics it'd appear.

With the genie out of the bottle, there is little MSI or AMD can do to place it lower back in. MSI can in reality lock the 200GE backtrack with a destiny BIOS revision, however that may not exchange the fact that you may flash the cutting-edge November release and overclock all of the identical. With the AGESA 1.zero.zero.6 firmware established a Chip:n MSI motherboard you truly need to enter the BIOS and practice a fashionable multiplier overclock.

Our 200GE wouldn’t publish at 4 GHz, it did post at three.nine GHz however inspite of 1.4v wasn’t completely solid in Windows. At three.8 GHz it was one hundred% stable with 1.35v, so that’s in which we determined to check.

DDR4 memory continues to be locked down, so we had been confined to DDR4-2666, however you can song the timings to enhance performance there. For checking out though CL14 memory turned into used given that that’s no longer overly expensive in 2400 to 2666 speeds.

Compared to stock clocks we have been able to boom the middle frequency with the aid of 19% from 3.2 GHz to 3.eight GHz. Not an earth shattering increase but each little bit is genuinely going to help the $55 Zen processor. Unfortunately we don’t have the 200GE container cooler handy, so the Wraith Stealth changed into used for this overclock. Nevertheless we suspect that the field cooler will facilitate this overclock because the Wraith Stealth peaked at just 59 levels after an hour lengthy Blender stress check with an ambient room temperature of 21 stages.

For testing, we used a Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti. Yes, it’s an unrealistic GPU to pair with this CPU however for the reason of getting rid of any GPU bottleneck and be able to later evaluate this records with that of the better-stop CPUs, we went this manner. Then of path the whole point of trying out and comparing those CPUs is to test CPU performance, not low cease GPU performance. So with all that made clean, permit’s soar into the results.

Benchmarks

First up we've got Cinebench R15 and here we see our 19% overclock has advanced the multi-threaded rating by way of 13%, no longer awful. This is just four% lower than our simulated three.9 GHz overclock the usage of the Ryzen four 2400G with half the cores disabled. It’s worth noting that this overclock allowed the 200GE to overtake the Pentium G5400 by using a small margin.

Testing with Corona shows a mere 7% time discount for the render take a look at, now not outstanding but it does region the 200GE tons toward the Pentium G5400 on this test.

Running our overclock although the Blender render test suggests a more marvelous 14% reduction in render time and locations the 200GE miles beforehand of the AVX-lacking Pentium G5400. Good stuff, however now it’s time to check out some games.

Testing with Assassin's Creed Odyssey we see that the overclocked 200GE offers a nine% increase for the common frame charge and a miles wanted 15% raise to the body time overall performance. The sport played pretty smoother with the 200GE overclocked, so while the gains don’t appear that giant, they surely are.

We discover a similar tale with Assassin's Creed Origins and now the overclocked 200GE is able to match the average body charge of the Pentium G5400 however kill it for the body time overall performance.

Testing with Battlefield 1 exhibits a pleasant 14% increase a Boxverage frame fee performance at 1080p, going from 71 fps to eighty one fps once overclocked.

We also see a few solid overall performance gains with Forza Horizon four, a nine% increase became enough to simply push the 200GE in advance of the extra luxurious Pentium G5400.

The profits in Hitman were big, a 16% enhance is visible at 1080p because the 200GE went from a stock end result of 38 fps to an overclocked result of 44 fps and now the experience is miles better than what you get with the G5400, in particular due to the 1% min FPS.

Wrap Up

With the right motherboard you may now overclock the Athlon 200GE and improve gaming overall performance by means of as tons as sixteen%, which isn't any small margin for an access-degree CPU.

As a long way as we can inform, this may require an MSI motherboard and for those searching for new options we propose something like the B450M Pro-VDH because it prices simply $70. Throw the $55 200GE on that and you have a quite respectable ultra low cost combo as soon as overclocked.

Alternatively, in case you’re after a placeholder till Zen 2 arrives the 200GE will paintings simply as properly Chip: AMD better nice board, which include the B450 Gaming Pro Carbon that I used.

Having said all that, our opinion at the satisfactory finances CPU has no longer modified, and we nevertheless strongly advise you spend the greater $45 at the Ryzen three 2200G and overclock that. It’s a far extra succesful processor and factoring in just a primary $70 B450 board way it simplest prices 35% more, throw in sixteen GB of reminiscence and you’re all the way down to a 20% top class for the lots faster 2200G.

  • AMD Athlon 200GE on Amazon, Newegg
  • five 2500U 3 2200G on Amazon, Newegg
  • Ryzen blend: MSI B450M Pro-VDH & DDR4-3200 RAM