Overclocking the $55 AMD Athlon 200GE CPU

In an unexpected plow of events, it'due south now possible to overclock the otherwise-locked Athlon 200GE processor that currently sits every bit the least expensive Zen-based fleck y'all can buy, selling for about $55. In what appears to exist a slip upwards by MSI, nearly two weeks agone the component maker released a new BIOS for their full range of AM4 motherboards to include support version 1.0.0.6 of AMD's Generic Encapsulated Software Compages, otherwise known as AGESA.

This latest version improves memory support past enhancing overclocking and compatibility, information technology likewise adds a virtualization-related feature that enables the power to manually assign PCIe graphics cards within IOMMU groups.

Improved memory support is great, of course, just today we're exploring Athlon 200GE overclocking which has been inadvertently enabled across MSI's AM4 motherboard lineup.

We've tried a scattering of Asrock B350 and B450 boards, but none enabled 200GE overclocking. However, all MSI AM4 boards do, and we've confirmed this ourselves from budget B350 boards right upwards to the higher-end B450 models such as the Gaming Pro Carbon, for example. Nosotros've nonetheless to try additional Asus or Gigabyte boards, nosotros'll give them a shot presently merely and so far reports are merely coming in from MSI owners. Surely, MSI has made a mistake here, but a happy accident for budget enthusiasts information technology would seem.

With the genie out of the bottle, at that place is little MSI or AMD tin can practise to put it dorsum in. MSI can certainly lock the 200GE back down with a future BIOS revision, simply that won't change the fact that you tin flash the current November release and overclock all the same. With the AGESA 1.0.0.6 firmware installed on an MSI motherboard you simply need to enter the BIOS and apply a standard multiplier overclock.

Our 200GE wouldn't mail service at four GHz, it did post at three.9 GHz only fifty-fifty with 1.4v wasn't completely stable in Windows. At three.viii GHz it was 100% stable with 1.35v, then that's where nosotros decided to test.

DDR4 memory is still locked downwardly, so we were limited to DDR4-2666, but you can tune the timings to improve performance there. For testing though CL14 retentiveness was used since that'due south not overly expensive in 2400 to 2666 speeds.

Compared to stock clocks we were able to increase the core frequency by 19% from three.two GHz to three.viii GHz. Not an earth shattering increase just every little chip is really going to help the $55 Zen processor. Unfortunately we don't accept the 200GE box cooler on hand, then the Wraith Stealth was used for this overclock. Nevertheless nosotros suspect that the box cooler will facilitate this overclock as the Wraith Stealth peaked at just 59 degrees after an hour long Blender stress test with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees.

For testing, nosotros used a Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti. Yes, information technology'southward an unrealistic GPU to pair with this CPU merely for the purpose of removing whatsoever GPU bottleneck and be able to subsequently compare this data with that of the higher-end CPUs, we went this way. And then of course the unabridged point of testing and comparing these CPUs is to examination CPU performance, not depression end GPU performance. So with all that fabricated clear, let's leap into the results.

Benchmarks

Start upwards nosotros have Cinebench R15 and here we see our 19% overclock has improved the multi-threaded score past thirteen%, nifty. This is but 4% lower than our false 3.9 GHz overclock using the Ryzen 4 2400G with one-half the cores disabled. It'south worth noting that this overclock allowed the 200GE to overtake the Pentium G5400 by a small margin.

Testing with Corona shows a mere 7% time reduction for the render test, not amazing but information technology does place the 200GE much closer to the Pentium G5400 in this test.

Running our overclock though the Blender render test shows a more than impressive 14% reduction in render time and places the 200GE miles ahead of the AVX-lacking Pentium G5400. Good stuff, but now information technology's time to check out some games.

Testing with Assassin's Creed Odyssey we see that the overclocked 200GE offers a 9% boost for the average frame rate and a much needed 15% boost to the frame time operation. The game played noticeably smoother with the 200GE overclocked, so while the gains don't seem that significant, they really are.

We discover a like story with Assassin's Creed Origins and now the overclocked 200GE is able to match the average frame charge per unit of the Pentium G5400 just impale it for the frame time performance.

Testing with Battlefield one reveals a nice 14% increase in average frame rate performance at 1080p, going from 71 fps to 81 fps in one case overclocked.

We also see some solid performance gains with Forza Horizon 4, a nine% boost was enough to just push the 200GE ahead of the more expensive Pentium G5400.

The gains in Hitman were huge, a sixteen% boost is seen at 1080p equally the 200GE went from a stock result of 38 fps to an overclocked event of 44 fps and at present the experience is miles better than what you become with the G5400, particularly considering of the ane% min FPS.

Here we see some other prissy performance gain, this time in Project Cars ii, going from 56 fps on average to 63 fps at 1080p, a gratis 13% crash-land in frame rate.

In Rainbow Half dozen Siege the overclocked 200GE is still slower than the G5400 at 1080p just somehow information technology does much amend at 1440p.

We were having issues with the Athlon 200GE in Star Wars Battlefront Ii before, just a contempo game patch seems to have solved that, non sure if information technology's related or not merely the game loads faster on the 200GE at present and plays much ameliorate.

We also see a big xvi% boost to the boilerplate frame rate when overclocking the Athlon processor, taking united states from 67 fps to 78 fps at 1080p and here it was much faster than the Pentium G5400.

Last up we have Shadow of the Tomb Raider and delight note you volition see considerably better frame rates using the built-in canned benchmark, as that'due south not very CPU intensive and mainly focuses on GPU operation. So actually playing the game on a depression-end CPU volition provide very dissimilar results, results like what you meet here. The overclocked 200GE boosts frame rates past 12% which is ok, simply truth exist told this game is a scrap across an SMT enabled dual-core that isn't clocked beyond v GHz.

Wrap Up

With the right motherboard you lot tin now overclock the Athlon 200GE and boost gaming performance by as much every bit sixteen%, which is no small margin for an entry-level CPU.

As far as we can tell, this volition require an MSI motherboard and for those shopping for new options we suggest something similar the B450M Pro-VDH every bit it costs only $70. Throw the $55 200GE on that and you lot have a pretty decent ultra affordable combo in one case overclocked.

Alternatively, if you're after a placeholder until Zen 2 arrives the 200GE will work just every bit well on a ameliorate quality board, such as the B450 Gaming Pro Carbon that I used.

Having said all that, our opinion on the all-time budget CPU has not changed, and nosotros still strongly suggest y'all spend the extra $45 on the Ryzen 3 2200G and overclock that. It's a much more capable processor and factoring in just a basic $70 B450 board means it only costs 35% more, throw in xvi GB of memory and you're down to a 20% premium for the much faster 2200G.