AMD Launches Athlon 220GE And 240GE Zen CPUs To Challenge Intel Pentium Family

We should caution that these chips aren't aimed at the enthusiast market -- they will instead be aimed at entry-level desktops where they will compete with systems using Intel Pentium processors. The Athlon 200 family is based on AMD's AM4 socket design and will plug right into existing motherboards. 

All of these processors are based on 14nm Zen architecture -- given its placement in AMD's processor pecking order -- instead of the current Zen+ (12nm) or Zen 2 (7nm) architecture that will be coming in 2019.

All of the processors in the family are dual-core ports, with a total of 4 threads. In addition, all three processors have integrated Radeon Vega graphics, albeit in an extremely cut-down form. The Vega graphics only have 3 compute units, but AMD reckons that the CPU + GPU combination will be good enough to handle 720p eSports gaming. 

The processors mainly differ in their clock speed, with the Athlon 200GE, Athlon 220GE, and Athlon 240GE ringing in at 3.2GHz, 3.4GHz and 3.5GHz respectively. Regardless of the SKU, all processors feature a TDP of 35 watts. In a direct shot at Intel, AMD says that the Athlon 200GE offers a 67 percent uplift in graphics performance while delivering twice the power efficiency compared to its Pentium-based competition. 

The Athlon 200GE, Athlon 220GE, and Athlon 240GE are available now priced at $55, $65, and $75 respectively.