Most Intel CPUs designed for consumer desktops and laptops have some form of built-in onboard graphics processing, but that's not the case for AMD's Ryzen chips.
The model we're reviewing here, the Ryzen 3 2200G, is one of the few chips in the lineup (code-named "Raven Ridge") that has an onboard graphics processor, which means you don't need to install a discrete GPU if you're using it to build a budget desktop PC.
The main benefit of an integrated GPU is typically cost savings, rather than high performance, and at $99, Ryzen 3 2200G certainly checks the first box.
It's also a decent performer for everyday computing and light gaming, which means it's an excellent choice to power an inexpensive gaming PC.
Budget-Friendly and Well-Equipped
With four cores, four threads, and a base clock speed of 3.5GHz, the Ryzen 3 2200G is well-provisioned for basic workloads.
It's game to handle anything that might occasionally make heavy demands upon a CPU, such as unzipping an archive folder or editing out the red eyes from your latest vacation photos.
Weigh down a browser window with dozens of tabs or start a 4K video export, though, and you'll quickly wish you had opted for a CPU with a higher core and thread count.
Speaking of cores and threads, the Ryzen 3 2200G's complement of four each matches what you'll find in its chief competitor, the Intel Core i3-8100.
Many of this chip's other specs also match those of the Ryzen 3 2200G: Both are built on a 14-nanometer (14nm) production process, and both consume 65 watts of power under normal conditions (known as thermal design power, or TDP).
Neither is capable of multithreading.
The Intel chip has a very slightly higher base clock frequency of 3.6GHz, and at $117, a similarly small price premium.
One glaring omission on the Core i3-8100's part is overclockability, which all Ryzen chips support.
For an overclockable Core i3, you'd have to step up to the Hyper-Threading-capable, $170 Core i3-8350K.
That isn't a lot to spend on a mainstream CPU—top-of-the-line Ryzen 7 and Core i7 chips cost several hundred dollars.
But in the budget zone in which these chips live, there's a big difference between $99 and $170, and adding more threads and increasing the clock speed by a few hundred megahertz isn't necessarily going to improve everyday performance on a budget chip, since it's not designed to accommodate the types of workflows that need more cores or higher clocks in the first place.
Even though AMD's simultaneous multithreading technology (SMT, similar to Intel's Hyper-Threading) isn't available on the Ryzen 3 2200G, it still includes the company's other main performance-enhancing features.
Precision Boost is an algorithm that enables higher frequencies in gaming and real-world applications by boosting the clock speed of each core when necessary.
The latest version can raise clock speeds in 25MHz increments depending on the requirements of the app you're currently running.
There's also Extended Frequency Range (XFR), which monitors CPU temperature and can temporarily boost speeds if it detects that your cooling system can handle it.
A Lot of Graphics Potential
Besides its low price, the Ryzen 3 2200G's secret weapon is its onboard Vega graphics processor.
The first group of Ryzen desktop chips, introduced in 2017, didn't include a built-in GPU.
That meant system builders were required to pair it with a dedicated graphics card purchased separately and installed in an available slot on the motherboard.
That's a fine setup for Ryzen early adopters, but it's not very practical for budget desktops or all-in-one PCs that don't need a lot of graphics horsepower.
It also doesn't help AMD's competitiveness in the low-end desktop-PC market, especially when the main alternatives from Intel all come with integrated graphics.
So in January, AMD unveiled new Ryzen chips with the company's Vega GPUs built in.
Despite the "Vega" name, this isn't anywhere near the full graphics experience you'd get from discrete Radeon RX Vega 56 and Radeon RX Vega 64($999.77 at Amazon) cards, which compete with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 10-series gaming graphics processors.
Instead, the Vega 8 processor that's integrated into the Ryzen 3 2200G is designed to offer performance in between Intel's integrated graphics and a more expensive discrete graphics chip.
There's also a more powerful Ryzen 5 2400G with Vega 11 graphics, as well as "GE" versions of both CPUs that have slightly lower power consumption and base clock speeds to make them easier to install in tiny desktops.
As Daxdi's test results below confirm, adding Vega graphics means that the Ryzen 3 2200G is significantly better than its Intel equivalents when it comes to playing graphics-intensive PC games.
Put simply, prospective Ryzen 3 2200G owners should expect equivalent or slightly worse everyday computing performance on many non-gaming tasks compared with an unlocked Intel Core i3, while enjoying significantly better gaming results and a smaller impact on their wallets.
Drop It in the (Existing) Socket
Even though the Ryzen 3 2200G boasts an integrated GPU, it uses the same AM4 socket and chipsets as the rest of the Ryzen family (excluding the ultra-high-end Ryzen Threadripper).
As long as you've got a case and AM4 motherboard with HDMI or DisplayPort outputs, the Ryzen 3 2200G will fit and let you use the on-chip graphics, although you may need to upgrade the BIOS after installation.
I performed my benchmark testing using Daxdi's Ryzen B350-chipset testbed, the same machine we used to test a host of other recent AMD CPUs.
It's equipped with a Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 motherboard, 16GB of Corsair DDR4 memory, and a Toshiba OCZ Vector 150 boot drive.
A Noctua AM4-compatible air cooler kept temperatures in check, but a high-end air cooler is likely overkill for a $99 CPU like the Ryzen 3 2200G, with a 65-watt TDP.
If you're building a system from scratch and don't plan on overclocking, the standard Wraith Stealth cooler that AMD includes in the box should be adequate...
The Wraith Stealth doesn't have programmable LED lighting like the Wraith Prism coolers that come with midrange and high-end Ryzen chips, but neither should you expect it to, at this price.
Enough Power for Basic Productivity Tasks
Once the Ryzen 3 2200G was up and running, I put it through a series of benchmark tests to gauge its performance on everyday tasks, as well as specialized applications like video rendering and compressing files.
For a bird's-eye view of the chip's theoretical performance, the Cinebench R15 test offers a proprietary score based on using all four of the CPU's cores, as well as just a single core.
This distinction between one and multiple cores is important because many older apps aren't optimized to run on multiple cores, and if you're trying to save money on your CPU, you're likely also hoping to get several more years out of the software you might already have been running for a few years.
On the Cinebench single-core test, the Ryzen 3 achieved a score of 149, roughly the same as its sibling, the Ryzen 5 2400G, but significantly lower than the Intel Core i3-7350K.
(I'm using this older Intel chip for comparisons instead of the latest Core i3-8350K in part because the motherboards that support the newer Intel CPU tend to be more expensive, somewhat lessening its appeal among budget builders, though new-ish B360 boards are changing that dynamic.)
In the real world, this could mean worse performance on notorious resource hogs like Apple's iTunes, here tested in a single-threaded version that doesn't take advantage of the latest CPU advances.
Using the older iTunes 10.6, it took the Ryzen 3 2200G 2 minutes and 3 seconds to encode a group of audio files into the commonly used AAC format.
The Intel Core i3-7350K finished this task in just 1:40.
On the other hand, if you frequently use up-to-date software that does take advantage of multiple threads and cores, the Ryzen 3 2200G should fare much better.
Its all-cores Cinebench score of 582 is better than the Intel Core i3-7350K (439) and two first-gen Ryzen 3 chips, the Ryzen 3 1200 (473) and the SMT-capable Ryzen 3 1300X($327.71 at Amazon) (550).
In the real world, this means that the Ryzen 3 2200G will serve as a decent low-cost platform for multithreaded apps like Handbrake, an open-source utility for converting videos between formats.
Typically, the more threads and cores your processor has, the better Handbrake likes it.
Indeed, the Ryzen 3 2200G took just 15:19 to convert a 12-minute 4K video file to 1080p.
The Core i3-7350K performed the same task in 22:59, while the previous-gen Ryzen 3 chips both took longer than 16 minutes.
The multi-core, multi-thread performance story is much the same with 7-Zip, another widely used app, this one for compressing files that takes advantage of as many cores and threads that your processor can offer.
The Ryzen 3 2200G achieved a score of 15,810 on the app's built-in benchmark, again outperforming its previous-gen predecessors and the Core i3.
As decent as the Ryzen 3 2400G's multi-core performance is, however, it's no match for a midrange consumer desktop CPU like the Ryzen 5 2600X, which achieved an all-cores score of 1,349 on the Cinebench test, and also trounced the rest of the chips on the 7-Zip and Handbrake tests.
Unsurprisingly, this more expensive chip, which includes multithreading, also excelled at niche tasks like rendering a complex photo-realistic image using ray tracing in the POV-Ray benchmark, or performing a basic render in Blender.
Ultimately, all the productivity testing results boil down to three takeaways: if you're running up-to-date simple apps like Handbrake, the Ryzen 3 2400G is an excellent choice.
If you're using older apps or ones that don't take advantage of multiple CPU cores, an Intel chip like the Core i3-7350K might be a better bet.
And if you're looking for a chip to handle complex tasks like 3D rendering, you'll have to spend significantly more on a midrange CPU.
Not a Dedicated GPU, But Acts Like One
The Ryzen 3 2200G isn't a rocket when it comes to productivity, but it's far more competent when it comes time to relax with a gaming session.
On the venerable but still-demanding title Sleeping Dogs at Medium quality settings, I witnessed the Vega graphics processor churning out an average of 72 frames per second (fps) using the in-game benchmark.
This result should be extremely attractive to budget gamers, who likely buy a few games a year and own 60Hz monitors that can't display more than 60fps.
Even when I tried the more demanding (but still older) 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, the Ryzen 3 2200G did not disappoint, turning in 60fps on the Normal quality setting at 1080p.
Dialing up the settings to Ultra quality resulted in 37fps, which makes for a less enjoyable experience but is still above the 30fps minimum I consider acceptable for smooth gaming.
To get a sense of how good these in-game benchmark results are, consider that even low-end discrete GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce MX series typically don't offer more than 50fps under similar conditions.
Meanwhile, the integrated graphics chip in the Intel Core i3-7350K achieved 31fps on the Tomb Raider Normal test, and just 16fps at the Ultra setting.
It's remarkable that AMD is able to stuff this much graphics power into a sub-$100 chip that also serves as the CPU.
Perhaps the only downside here is that you'll be tempted to buy the latest and greatest AAA games—or perhaps a 4K monitor—with the money you save on the Ryzen 3 2400G, and those would certainly be too taxing for this chip.
Like all Ryzen CPUs, you can overclock the Ryzen 3 2200G, and AMD makes it relatively easy to adjust many settings like clock speed, power, and memory clock speed using the Ryzen Master app (seen below).
It runs in Windows, and many settings can be applied without a restart, which makes experimenting even easier.
Because the ability to overclock depends on your skill level and the quality of your cooler, power supply, and other components, many Ryzen 3 buyers will be best served by letting AMD's optimization tech manage the CPU's performance for them.
If you are interested in overclocking, you can check out Daxdi's Ryzen 5 2600X review for more on how the process works.
Tough to Beat on Value
Not only can you skip buying a separate GPU if you choose the Ryzen 3 2400G, but even the cheapest AM4 motherboards will suffice, which means extra cost savings.
If you're looking for a budget workhorse that can run older productivity software, however, an Intel Core i3 might be a better choice, though you'll have to shell out extra for both the CPU and the motherboard if you opt for the latest Coffee Lake generation.
Another option on the AMD side is to step up to the $169 Ryzen 5 2400G, which includes an even more powerful Vega 11 graphics chip, multithreading, and twice as many threads as the Ryzen 3 2200G.
(Our review of the Ryzen 5 2400G is forthcoming.) But if you want an enjoyable PC-gaming experience for as little money as possible and are willing to stick with 1080p gaming at normal quality settings, the Ryzen 3 2200G is a fine value.
The Bottom Line
If you're a casual gamer building a PC on a budget, you'll thrill to the AMD Ryzen 3 2200G, an inexpensive CPU with a built-in graphics processor that delivers far more gaming performance than its price suggests.
