2400g vs i3-3240: Does the CPU matter with a lower end graphics card?

In our previous test, it was shows that the 2400G's Radeon™ Vega 11 Graphics doesn't have the same in game performance as the RX 460 2GB, which was released in August of 2016 or the GTX 750 ti 2 GB which was released in February 2014.

Other tests have shown that the 2400G's Radeon™ Vega 11 Graphics doesn't perform as well as a GT 1030 in most games.  Also, other tests have shown that the 2400G's Radeon™ Vega 11 Graphics can be outperformed in most games by an Intel G4650 and GT 1030.  However, it may be useful to have the 4 cores and 8 threads if you plan to perform a graphics card upgrade in the future to something faster than a GT 1030.

Methods:

A replay of a tier 6 battle on the Abbey map was used for this test.  The first 5 minutes and 35 seconds of the battle was used to measure average FPS, minimum FPS, and maximum FPS.  Fraps was used to record the FPS data and the measurement of FPS started when the countdown timer reached 00:00.

The 2400G used the stock AMD CPU cooler included with the CPU.  Neither the CPU or onboard Radeon™ Vega 11 Graphics were overclocked.  System RAM was 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000 memory with 2 GB allocated for use by the Radeon™ Vega 11 Graphics.  The motherboard used was the ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F with the latest UEFI/BIOS and latest drivers for all hardware.

CPU: AMD R5 2400G
Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F
Memory: 16 GB(2x8GB) of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000
SSD: Sandisk Ultra 3D 512GB SDSSDH3-512G-G25
OS: Windows 10 Professional 64 bit

The i3-3240 used the stock retail box Intel CPU cooler.  The i3-3240 was not overclocked.  The 5+ year old dried out thermal compound on the i3-3240 retail heat sink was replaced with a small amount of Prolimatech PK-3 Nano Aluminium Thermal Compound.  System RAM was 16 GB of Kingston Hyper X Red 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz RAM.  The motherboard used was the Asrock H61M-VG4 with the latest UEFI/BIOS and latest drivers for all hardware.

CPU: Intel i3-3240
Thermal Compound: Prolimatech PK-3 Nano Aluminium Thermal Compound
Motherboard: Asrock H61M-VG4
Memory: 16 GB(2x8GB) Kingston Hyper X Red 16GB DDR3-1600
Hard Drive: Hitachi 2.5" HTS727575A9E364
OS: Windows 10 Professional 64 bit

Common parts between the two systems:
Graphics Card: PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 AXRX 460 2GBD5-DH/OC
Power Supply: EVGA 850 Watt 110-BQ-0850-RX

Results:

click on chart to enlarge

Both the i3-3240 and R5 2400G when using the RX 460 had similar performance in World of Tanks at Ultra and Maximum graphics settings.  Surprisingly, the i3-3240 had higher average FPS at both Ultra and Maximum graphics settings when using the RX 460 graphics card when compared to the R5 2400G.

The i3-3240 has a slower clock speed than the 2400G(i3-3240 3.4 GHz vs 2400G 3.6 GHz with a 3.9 GHz boost speed).  DDR3 RAM has lower latency than DDR4 RAM.  This may be one of the reasons for the difference in average FPS.  Further testing may be needed to determine why the results were slightly better with the slower, old Intel CPU.

Conclusion:

The R5 2400G doesn't show an advantage over a lower performance, lower priced CPU when using a low end graphics card.  World of Tanks appears to be more limited by the GPU than the CPU at 1920x1080 with lower end graphics cards.

In the future, we will test the 2400G vs many other other CPUs with a water cooled GTX 1080 ti to see when the 2400G has an advantage over other CPUs for future graphics card upgrades.  Also, we will be testing the 2400G water cooled and overclocked with its onboard Radeon™ Vega 11 Graphics also overclocked.

Notes:

I received no free hardware for testing or evaluation from any retailer or manufacturer of computer hardware for this comparison test.  The reviews are not influenced by free hardware donation.

If you appreciated my work and want to help support future World of Tanks hardware benchmarks, help me out in any of the several ways listed below:

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