Gaming is expensive, let us all face that fact for a moment. We, techENT, are gamers and we love to game. We also love new gaming gear and hardware. We loved it when AMD launched their new Ryzen 5000 series processors and took over as the king of gaming processors. We loved NVIDIA’s new very powerful GPUs in the form of their next generation GeForce RTX 30 series Ampere architecture. What we talk less about though is the cost of gaming.
While all the new stuffs are great and amazing, we always forget that these powerful hardware come at a price. With the global chip shortage issue, prices become even more exaggerated. An example of this would be the prices of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU in the market these days at around MYR 5,000 a piece. You can buy a new pre-built PC for that kind of money. If you have not checked out Acer’s Predator Orion 3000 for that matter, that pre-built is a steal at MYR 6,899 compared to building your own system at this time.
With prices and availability of GPUs soaring as high as MYR 16,000 these days, building a ‘budget’ gaming rig may not be so pocket friendly after all. There is a solution, however. What if you cut out the most expensive part of your PC build? What if you exclude a GPU in your gaming build?
Now we hear questions like; “but is the GPU not the most important part of a gaming build?”, and “how are we to game without a GPU? Are you nuts?”. Hear us out. You can still build your PC with a GPU, just not with a huge GPU that is hanging from your PCIe slot. It is a GPU that is also integrated with your CPU, and APU (Accelerated Processing Unit, if you must know).
AMD has just released their next generation Ryzen 5000 G-series processors announced earlier this year in COMPUTEX, AMD Ryzen Zen 3 architecture processors with integrated Radeon VEGA graphics built into the CPU itself. That also means that you technically can solely rely on the AMD Ryzen chip for graphical requirements. In practical terms, you do not strictly need a separate GPU to get your PC to boot and run properly.
The AMD Ryzen 5000 G-series APUs comes in two flavours too. You can either choose between an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G or an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G. Of course, the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G would be the more powerful of the two packing more cores than the Ryzen 5. Both of them comes with AMD’s Radeon graphics power integrated within the chip as well.
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
The new AMD Ryzen 5700G with Zen 3 architecture comes with 8 cores and 16 threads, pretty much similar to its non-G-series counterpart, the Ryzen 7 5800X. Like its more premium counterpart, it also clocks at 3.8GHz at its base. There are differences between the two though. It only boosts up to 4.6GHz, compared to 4.7Ghz, for example. The APU is also built to draw less power at 65W compared to 105W. It also packs an extra 8 Radeon Compute Units (CU) that clocks at 2.0GHz, which is amazing if you think about it. It draws less power than the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X powerhouse, but it also packs its own graphics processing ability.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
At a more budget conscious range is the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G. It still packs a lot of power though from its 6 cores and 12 threads. It is also clocked a little higher than its Ryzen 5 5600X counterpart, at least on its base clock at 3.9GHz compared to 3.7GHz. It tops out at 4.4GHz though instead of the 4.6GHz of its CPU counterpart. With an additional 7 Radeon CU, the AMD Ryzen 5600G APU also only draws up to 65W in power, which is quite an amazing feat too in its own rights.
Full HD Gaming
Of course, integrated graphics (IGP), you might need to adjust your expectations in gaming performances. If you are on a tight budget, you most likely will not be getting one of those 1440p displays with 165Hz refresh rate. You probably will be looking at Full HD displays that goes to 144Hz at the maximum. You would be happy to find that AMD’s Ryzen 5000 G-series APUs are more than capable at running modern titles at more than 100 fps in some cases. Games like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) easily goes over 100fps in Full HD (low) settings with the APU. At the same time, you do want to tamper with your settings a little to accommodate to the relatively less powerful integrated GPU.
Prices and Availability
The good news in all this is that this is also even more budget friendly than its X-series counterparts. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is retailing at MYR 1,239, while the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G retails for MYR 1,639. The AMD Ryzen 5000 G-series is now available from AMD’s local retail partners nationwide and on AMD’s own online store.