AMD Athlon 3000G Review

Announced and made available in November 2019, the Athlon 3000G is the latest entry-level processor of AMD. It is built on the Zen architecture and opens overclocking options for the entry-level market.

The Athlon 3000G has 2-cores and 4-threads that runs at fixed 3.5GHz clock speed and has a 35W TDP. With overclocking capability, the Athlon 3000G, which has1MB L2 cache and 4MB L3 cache is one of the most recommendable entry-level processors for office-tasks-centric machines. And just like the other AM4-based Athlon processors, the Athlon 3000G comes equipped with a Vega 3 Graphics that has 12 texture units and 4 ROPs and runs at 1100 MHz frequency. These along with a budget-friendly price tag make the AM4 Athlon series, especially, the Athlon 3000G a heavy contender for a startup internet cafe.

The question is, would this new entry-level processor be the right match for your next project? If you want to know more about it, then let’s check out the Athlon 3000G and run it through some tests and benchmarks on this review.

Athlon 3000G Specifications:

• Number of Cores: 2
• Number of Threads: 4
• L2 Cache: 1MB
• L3 Cache: 4MB
• Integrated Graphics: Vega 3
• TDP: 35W

Test Bench Setup:

• Processor: Athlon 3000G
• Motherboard: Gigabyte AB350M-HD3 (Latest BIOS)
• Memory: HyperX Predator DDR4 4266 MHZ 16GB Kit (Running at 3200MHz)
• Storage: Kingmax 256GB M.2 NVME SSD, Seagate FireCuda 2TB
• Power Supply: Thermaltake SMART 700W

Athlon 3000G Benchmarks:

For the benchmarks and tests, we use the integrated graphics of the Athlon 3000G for our synthetic benchmarks and game tests to show the full potential of the processor with its Vega 3 internal graphics; and to know which resolution is best for it in gaming and how much performance one should expect from it on productivity tasks such as, but not limited to, basic photo and video editing.

These tests are done with default out-of-the-box frequency and overclocked frequency. The tests herein can be replicated easily. The synthetic benchmarking softwares that we used are readily available for download from their respective developer sites, while all the games used in this review are available for download (some would need to be purchased) from their respective gaming platforms.

Cinebench R20

Handbrake

TimeSpy CPU Score & iGPU Score

Game Tests:

On Cinebench R20, the AMD Athlon 3000G shows a little performance difference from one of its predecessors the Athlon 240GE in both single-threaded and multi-threaded tests. 

The Athlon 3000G on the Cinebench R20 single-threaded test scored 339, while the Athlon 240GE scored 334. On the multi-threaded test, the Athlon 3000G managed to score 898 and pull away from its predecessor, however, the lack of significant performance gain makes the Athlon 3000G a little undesirable. Even on the following tests that focused on processor performance, the Athlon 3000G was still not able to provide acceptable scores when compared to its predecessor, the Athlon 240GE. 

The most visible performance gain of the Athlon 3000G against its predecessor is showcased in full color on our gaming tests, which show that even at default clock speed, the Athlon 3000G provides better frame rates than the previous generation Athlon 240GE on eSports titles set to lowb at 720p resolution. Moreover, with its overclocking capability, the Athlon 3000G provides up to 30% increase in performance which widens the performance gap from its predecessor.

However, the retail price of the Athlon 3000G can easily get someone a second-generation Ryzen APU from the second-hand market that offers significant performance boosts on both gaming and productivity tasks. But then again, we are not talking about the second-hand market here, we just want to point out that there are other options that can provide real value for money, but that is a topic for another time.

Conclusion

The Athlon 3000G is a processor worth checking out if you are building an office-centric machine or looking to have a low-powered machine specifically for multimedia consumption. The lack of significant processor improvement, when compared to the previous generation offerings, is disappointing.

However, with its overclocking capability, it can easily compensate for its shortcomings. This will also lower the bottleneck that it’ll have when it’s partnered with a higher tier discreet GPU. Aside from that, there aren’t many processors in its price point that are overclockable, which makes this entry-level processor one of the best choices when you are aiming for flexibility. Though the iGPU remains the same as the previous generation’s, it still delivers a visible increase in gaming performance, which can easily be pushed further by overclocking.

So, if you’re building your first gaming PC on a very tight budget and wants everything fresh out of the box, then you might want to start with an Athlon 3000G based system, which also offers 3 generations of processors to upgrade into when the need for more performance arises.