They're here, Vega based desktop APUs (Raven Ridge) from AMD, the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G and today we'll review the latter one in this particular article. AMD has been going strong with their processors, and now increases their market validity by adding a series of processors that have built-in graphics capabilities, APUs. If you do not need a heavy duty graphics card and use your PC merely for desktop stuff and perhaps a mild game here and there, hey ... AMD surely has got a strong offering for you starting today. There's no need to purchase a dedicated graphics card. That means even more value for money as you receive mainstream to fairly high-end quad-core desktop performance for attractive prices. Now, if you have not heard or learned about the Ryzen releases in 2017, you must have been living under a rock, no worries, let's recap and compare a little on what you guys can expect. We'll start 'entry-level' with Ryzen 3 and 5 processors series lining up with Intel's Core i3 series. The difference, of course, is that Intel offers the Core i3 series as a dual-core part, and only recently started adding an SMT/HT version configured as 2 cores and 4 threads. They did that as they noticed what was coming from AMD. In a bold move AMD today launches Ryzen 3 and 5 G series, with that G for graphics.

AMD has already announced the two APUs, which by the way are compatible with existing B350 and X370 motherboard with merely a firmware update. The first two models Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G that AMD outs are the first CPUs with embedded Radeon Vega architecture graphics. There are other notable features to mention as well, The APUs now have the official default support of DDR4-2933 in dual-channel operation. And for AMD faster memory is important for two reasons, the first being it reacts better to CPU bound gaming, and secondly, system memory is an elementary link for AMD's APU to get the highest performance possible. For integrated graphics, the memory cannot be fast enough as that system memory is used.