This generation’s lack of truly budget-minded components has been an issue for many consumers, but AMD could be fixing it very soon with the relaunch of some of its budget-friendly Ryzen 3000G-series chips.
According to a report from Board Channels, AMD may be bringing back the only two models of its low-end Ryzen 3000G series processors, the quad-core 3400G and quad-core 3200G. VideoCardz asserts that AMD will be manufacturing up to 30K of them, which will be sold alongside cheap motherboards like the B450M series.
It isn’t clear whether the 3000G series processors will be equipped with upgraded hardware or will ship as it was originally released back in 2019. These two were the Picasso family of processors that boasted 12nm Zen+ architecture with the Ryzen 5 3400G running with a 3.7GHz base clock and 4.2GHz boost, and the Ryzen 3 3200G hitting 3.6GHz and 4GHz respectively.
Currently, the pricing on Newegg finds the former at $129.99 and the latter at $99.99. Absolute bargain pricing compared to current and even last gen chips, but the superior Ryzen 5 5600G is at $140 which means the lower-end processors are long overdue for a price adjustment.
This could inspire more affordable options in the future
We’ve covered how expensive graphics cards are in this generation, with no proper budget options for those who can’t afford to spend tons of money on a single card. And just like GPUs, current-gen CPUs have been suffering the same pricing issue.
However, AMD could score a minor win in its competition with Intel, and in a way that Intel doesn’t seem to be considering. While Team Blue has released its own budget graphics cards, it hasn’t launched or announced any relaunches of its older and cheaper versions of its processors.
If Team Red relaunches the 3400G and 3200G, this would open back up an underserved market of buyers who may need a cheap PC that performs well enough for them without breaking the bank. And especially in these hard times, that’s a valuable market to have and keep. And while it would be nice if Team Red refreshes the hardware to improve performance, even these processors on its old hardware would be plenty enough for many PC users.
Hopefully, a rereleased Ryzen 3000G series inspires the competition to try a similar tactic to compete. Then we all win with plenty of affordable choices on the market.
