Conclusion
Honestly, the Ryzen 3 1200 “AF” turned out to be a far more serious upgrade over the original Ryzen 3 1200 than we thought. So big that honestly it would make sense to create a whole new model based on it. At a price of around 60 bucks, it competes directly with the Athlon 3000G and various versions of Intel’s Pentium models, and we don’t think it makes any sense to comment on the performance situation. 4 cores are 4 cores, and given the reasonably high frequency and AVX support, we don’t think it makes sense using a 2 core / 4 thread processor for even the most basic gaming machine with a separate video card.
And yet, we personally would not recommend it outside of the context of a very, VERY budget machine. Literally, if you split the penny, you fit into the budget. Or if gaming is not your top priority and you want a cheap home/office machine and only rarely game on it from with some older graphics card or something low-end. If you have a little more budget, in any case we recommend the Ryzen 5 1600 “AF” or even the old Ryzen 1600 if the new one is missing. Especially if your goal is online games like COD: Warzone, Fortnite, Overwatch or Apex Legends. But even when playing at high settings, the benefits of this type of processor over the older Ryzen 3 1200 “AE” are at the notably higher minimum frame rates.
