The Athlon 3000G ($49 MSRP, but selling everywhere at this writing for $55 to $65) is AMD's newest entry in its economy desktop processor line, but in truth the 3000G is mostly old CPU wine in a new bottle. But still, it's a good vintage: On a hardware level, the Athlon 3000G is largely identical to the Athlon 240GE—a dual-core, four-thread processor operating at 3.5GHz. The new chip has a few new moves, though, as it's the first Ryzen-based Athlon CPU to support overclocking. This key feature helps the Athlon 3000G to stand above the other Athlons as the go-to part for anyone looking for a budget-friendly CPU with relatively strong performance.Basic Specs for a Basic CPU Just like all of AMD's other Ryzen-based Athlon processors, the 3000G features two SMT-enabled CPU cores. (SMT, or simultaneous multi-threading, is the technology that allows each CPU core to operate on two threads at a time.) This reduces processor stalls and leads to better utilization of the CPU's resources, w...

Offering solid performance (and decent on-chip graphics silicon) right out of the box, AMD's Athlon 3000G is a worthwhile AM4-socket processor solution for anyone who can't quite afford a Ryzen 3 or Core i3.