AMD Ryzen 5 3400G Is Working Well On Linux

AMD Raven Ridge APUs were a rough launch particularly on Linux where even with the latest motherboard BIOS updates and Linux kernel I am still hitting occasional stability issues, so when the opportunity arose recently to try out the Ryzen 5 3400G as the successor in the Picasso family, I was interested. Fortunately, AMD Picasso APUs have proven to be in better shape on Linux so here is the initial round of performance tests for those interested in the AMD Linux performance on Ubuntu.

The Ryzen 5 3400G is a $150 USD APU and while launched alongside the new Zen 2 CPUs, the Ryzen 3000 series APUs are in fact based on Zen+ and using Vega graphics. The Ryzen 5 3400G features four cores / eight threads with a 3.7GHz base frequency and 4.2GHz turbo frequency. On the graphics side are Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics that clock up to 1.4GHz as a nice boost over the Ryzen 5 2400G. This AM4 APU has a 65 Watt TDP for this highest-performing Picasso socketed APU.

With Raven Ridge on Linux at launch it was a particularly bumpy experience with display/graphics issues. Those have improved over time but with some motherboards and BIOS updates paired with ongoing Linux kernel changes have at times yielded an experience like Russian roulette. In fact, with my motherboards and the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G, even when using the very latest BIOS/firmware and the newest Linux software components, I wasn't able to run all of the same tests for this article 100% stable. I still hit stability issues over time but was not as bad or frequent as it was last year.

To much pleasure, the Ryzen 5 3400G hasn't caused me any grief in testing on Linux over the past few weeks. Even when using the same motherboards/firmware and Linux software components, this Picasso APU has behaved fine without any stability problems or other headaches. It's a delight to see but frustrating that Raven Ridge was still buggy.

For this inaugural Linux testing article of the Ryzen 5 3400G, I ran a variety of CPU benchmarks following our recent Ryzen 5 3600X Linux benchmarks and then also some basic tests of the Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics of the 3400G. Additional Linux gaming/graphics tests of the Ryzen 5 3400G will be coming up soon now that Picasso has proven itself sane on Linux.

First up is a look at the processor performance for this Zen+ processor alongside various other AMD and Intel CPUs while testing from Ubuntu 19.04 with the Linux 5.3 kernel. All benchmarks via the Phoronix Test Suite.