Skip to main content

Poll: Is AMD’s new APU fast enough to make a graphics card unnecessary?

AMD Ryzen 5 2400G & Ryzen 3 2200G Review fingers
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
AMD has always pitched its APUs as good options for people who want to play games on a budget. They’re entry-level processors that have on-board graphics — no graphics card necessary. At least, that’s always been the promise.

Hoping to finally fulfill that promise, we’ve now got the new $169 Ryzen 5 2400G processor, and the smaller $99 Ryzen 3 2200G, both powered by Vega graphics. The question with these APUs is whether or not they can actually replace a discrete graphics card. AMD claims they can, but our tests haven’t been quite as positive.

What they can do, however, is play games like Overwatch at 30-40 frames per second with Low settings. But is that enough for you?

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

The new Vega graphics easily outpace other onboard solutions like Intel HD graphics, but don’t get close to replacing something like a GTX 1050. As we’ve pointed out, it would only cost $90 more to pair a 1050 with a Ryzen 3 1200 — and see much better game performance.

Based on the results of our poll so far, it looks like many of agree with us. For those of you who are cool with getting a lower framerate, we’ll have to wait to see if some PC manufacturers can utilize these APUs in dirt-cheap desktops. For now, they just aren’t what you want to base a cheap gaming PC build on.

Editors' Recommendations

Luke Larsen
Senior Editor, Computing
Luke Larsen is the Senior editor of computing, managing all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, Macs, and more.
How Nvidia and AMD could make Windows laptops feel like MacBooks
An ARM processor.

In an unexpected twist, Nvidia may soon make more than just some of the best graphics cards. Rumor has it that it's working on ARM-based processors for client PCs. It's not alone in this historic venture, either, because AMD is also said to be readying ARM CPUs.

According to a report from Reuters, both AMD and Nvidia are getting ready to launch ARM-based systems on a chip (SoCs) as early as 2025. The target market will be client PCs that run Windows, which has had a slow and troubled embrace of ARM architecture historically. After how successful such chips have been in Apple's own M1 and M2 silicon, though, it seems obvious that the transition to ARM will need to speed up in order for ARM-powered Windows laptops to truly compete.

Read more
AMD retracts its new gaming feature after it was getting players banned
Gamer using Discord on a gaming desktop PC.

AMD has released a new graphics driver update that disables its newly introduced Anti-Lag+ technology in all supported games. The latest graphics driver (23.10.2) is a follow-up to 23.10.1, which launched almost a week ago and introduced Anti-Lag+ for Counter-Strike 2.

AMD has confirmed via the official release notes that the reason for disabling the anti-lag tech is due to recent reports about certain online games that were identifying Anti-Lag+ as a hacking tool, which then resulted in player bans. AMD also said that it is actively working with game developers and hopes to find a solution to reenable Anti-Lag+ and reinstate gamers who were impacted by the anti-cheat bans.

Read more
AMD’s new CPUs decisively end the high-performance battle with Intel
A person holding the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X.

AMD is putting its foot down. In what Donny Woligroski, senior processor technical marketing manager at AMD, called the "worst-kept secret" in the world of desktop processors, Team Red announced it's bringing its wildly popular Threadripper chips back to high-end desktops. They're destined to be some of the best processors money can buy, and Intel currently has no way to compete.

If you're not up to speed, AMD quietly and unceremoniously ended its Threadripper series for desktops a little over a year ago. When the company announced its previous generation of Threadripper CPUs, it revealed it would stick with the Enterprise-grade Pro series chips going forward. A little over 12 months after that announcement, AMD is reversing course.

Read more