The AMD Athlon lineup is known as the relatively low-performing lineup from the company. But, this lineup used to be the state-of-the-art offering from the company in the past. Now, it has been replaced by the Ryzen processors. The Athlon processors still live on as a relatively low price alternative to the Ryzen offerings. But, are these chips good for gaming? Let us find out.
What are the Currently Available AMD Athlon Processors?
The only Athlon processor which AMD manufactures and is available in the market today is the Athlon 3000G. It replaced the older Athlon 2000GE processor and still has not seen a 5000 series successor. The Athlon 3000G is a dual-core processor with hyperthreading technology on board. It has 1MB of L2 cache, and 4MB of L3 cache memory. The cores run at 3.5GHz, and it has a TDP of 35W.
The 3000G is an APU as it has a āGā at the end of its name. The graphics processor onboard is the Vega 3, which is decently powerful for a processor which is selling at the 60$ mark.
Are AMD Athlon Processors Enough for Games?
Coming to the gaming performance, the current-gen Athlon processors have not been designed to handle the latest AAA games in the market. These processors are mainly designed for low-power low-performing tasks and are suited for office computers or media PCs. Thes maximum AMD recommends on these processors is moderate multitasking.
But, if you want to game on them, your performance is going to be sub-optimal. The 3000G is more powerful than the Pentium Gold processor, but any cheap i3 from a couple of generations back or the Ryzen 3 2200G will easily beat it. These processors do not cost any more than the 3000G, thus making buying the Athlon processor a bit pointless. This processor has been built for office use, so enterprises who are buying parts in bulk can save quite an amount by paying 20$ less per processor.
However, if you pair this processor with any decent graphics processor like the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or the GeForce GTX 1650, you can play most of the modern AAA titles at low to medium graphics presets. The processor might still bottleneck these entry-level GPUs.
Overall, we do not recommend getting the Athlon 3000G for gaming. The Vega 3 that comes included with it is quite weak too. So, get a cheap i3 or a Ryzen 3 and pair it with an entry-level GPU. If you are tight on budget, look at the Ryzen 5 3400G. The Vega 11 it packs obliterates the need for a dedicated GPU to quite an extent.
