X - Higher clocked desktop processor (what you got)
G - Has integrated AMD Radeon Vega Graphics (what you probably want)
GE - Has integrated AMD Radeon Vega Graphics but lower TDP (what you might want in niche use cases)
For example, some of my homelab servers use older AMD Athlon 200 GE as their CPUs, due to the fact that there are on board graphics and because the TDP is 35W, both saving electricity and also allowing me to use passive cooling (with just a large heatsink https://www.arctic.de/en/Alpine-AM4-Passive/ACALP00022A).
> For example, some of my homelab servers use older AMD Athlon 200 GE as their CPUs, due to the fact that there are on board graphics and because the TDP is 35W, both saving electricity and also allowing me to use passive cooling (with just a large heatsink https://www.arctic.de/en/Alpine-AM4-Passive/ACALP00022A).
I have a server with a 3700x. I originally had a cheapo discrete AMD graphics card in it, but I ended up just yanking that and running the machine without any graphics card. Saves power.
Side note: not that you said it yourself, but since you bought up the "E" SKUs, and it often comes up:
in almost all situations, the "lower tier" CPUs can be replicated simply by taking the higher-tier CPU and setting a lower power limit. A 1800X with a 65W power limit is the same thing as a 1700, a 3400G with a 45W (?) power limit is the same thing as a 3400GE, etc. Since the "GE" chips and other niche SKUs (there is a 3700 non-X iirc, for example) are often OEM-only, and thus they only have a very limited availability, they will often command higher prices on ebay/etc than the "real" chip. In this case, there is no reason to seek out the "E" chip, with the possible exception of if it gets you the "pro" feature set and you happen to need one of the features (particularly for APUs since ECC is disabled on non-pro APUs). So if you see a 3400G for $200 and a 3400GE for $250 (made-up numbers) then don't buy the GE, buy the G and set the power limit yourself.
Lower-end chips do not have better binning - actually the opposite, higher-end chips have better binning and will run at lower voltages for a given frequency than the lower-end chips will. The "higher leakage clocks better" thing is not really a factor that matters on ambient cooling, that is for XOC doing LN2 or LHe runs, but it has entered the public consciousness that "low-TDP chips are binned for efficiency". Not in the consumer market they're not - the exceptions being things like Fury Nano that explicitly are binned better, and for which you pay a premium price for that efficiency. But most low-end consumer processors are just... low-end. They're priced according to performance, not binning.
You can see this in the SiliconLottery historically binning statistics: 1800X will categorically clock higher at any voltage than a 1700, a 3800X is categorically better at any voltage than a 3700X, etc - and that also means they will run a lower voltage at any target frequency. AMD bins straight-down in terms of chip quality: Epyc and TR get the best, then the high-end enthusiast chips, then the value enthusiast chips, then the efficiency parts at the bottom of the bins.
The "E" parts are efficient because they have a low power limit set - not because they're binned better. Lots of chips can run fine at lower voltages, they just don't do the peak frequencies as well as the binned chips. A 1800X will still get you a bit lower voltage - but since the voltage/power curve is quadratic, the difference in power is compressed at lower frequencies/voltages. Also, at a low-enough frequency you will bump into the minimum voltage required, so that tends to compress things as well. So at 3 GHz, the impact on binning between a 1800X and a 1700 would be a lot smaller than, say, at 4 GHz. The 1800X can usually do that fairly easily in a later sample, but 4 GHz is pretty much always pushing the limits of safe voltage for a 1700, for example, so the 1700 gets crappier silicon because it clocks lower.
(the "one weird exception" is lower core-count chips. If you think of each core as a dice roll, this means that an 8-core chip has to roll perfectly 8 times, where a 6-core chip only has to roll perfectly 6 times. Since all-core OC is limited by the performance of the worst core, this means that for equal yields, there may be more lower-core-count chips with high all-core OCs. Many midrange parts do not actually have defective cores, they're locked out for market segmentation to avoid undercutting margins on the higher-end parts (which is why Phenoms and 7950s used to be unlockable, etc) and - while I'm not sure AMD has explicitly ever said it - it would also be sensible that when they are disabling cores on an 8-core to turn it into a 6-core they pick the best 6 cores, which would push silicon quality upwards too. A 1600X actually has silicon quality comparable to a 1800X according to SiliconLottery, for example, despite being a much higher-volume part. This "weird exception" also gets complicated with Zen2/Zen3 because AMD deliberately uses a low-quality die for the second CCD (3900X/3950X) since it will mostly be used under those lower-clocking all-core loads, and the impact of binning is compressed in those lower-clocking situations...)
I heard the rumor that, starting with Zen4, AMD will include an embedded GPU in each and every CPU using the new socket.
This will end this situation, and give a nice bump to AMD's market share in e.g. Valve's steam client statistics.
These days, the performance of the embedded GPUs is already pretty usable, even allowing for running heavy videogames on lowish settings. They've been increasing the performance considerably (30-60%) on each generation for several generations.
The actual name of the CPU should help you find one that would work in that regard, for example, see this link which explains the naming suffixes: https://www.androidauthority.com/amd-cpu-guide-1222438/
In particular:
For example, some of my homelab servers use older AMD Athlon 200 GE as their CPUs, due to the fact that there are on board graphics and because the TDP is 35W, both saving electricity and also allowing me to use passive cooling (with just a large heatsink https://www.arctic.de/en/Alpine-AM4-Passive/ACALP00022A).For the Zen 2 series that your 3700X belongs to, you might want to look at this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ryzen_processors#A...
From what i can tell, the closest option performance wise to Ryzen 7 3700X but with on board graphics would be Ryzen 7 4700G.