AMD Ryzen

AMD launches Ryzen 8000G desktop CPUs, with updated iGPUs and AI acceleration

AMD's first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors are what the company used to call — Enlarge / AMD’s first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors are what the company used to call “APUs,” a combination of a fast integrated GPU and a reasonably capable CPU.

AMD

AMD’s G-series Ryzen desktop processors have always been a bit odd—a little behind the curve on AMD’s latest CPU architectures, but with integrated graphics performance that’s enough for a tiny and/or cheap gaming desktop without a dedicated graphics card. They’re also usually updated much more slowly than AMD’s other desktop Ryzens. Today, AMD is announcing a new lineup of Ryzen 8000G processors, chips that should provide a substantial boost over 2021’s Ryzen 5000G chips as long as you don’t mind buying a new socket AM5 motherboard and RAM to go with them.

There are three new processors releasing on January 31. The most powerful is the $329 Ryzen 7 8700G, an 8-core CPU with a Radeon 780M GPU. The next step down, and probably the best combination of price and performance, is the $229 6-core Ryzen 5 8600G, which comes with a slightly slower Radeon 760M GPU.

At the bottom of the range is the $179 Ryzen 5 8500G. It also includes six CPU cores, but with a wrinkle: two of those cores are regular Zen 4 cores, while four are smaller “Zen 4c” cores that are optimized to save space rather than run at high clock speeds. Zen 4c can do exactly the same things as Zen 4, but Zen 4c won’t be as fast, something to be aware of when you’re comparing the chips. The 8500G includes a Radeon 740M GPU.

The Radeon 780M uses 12 of AMD’s compute units (CUs), based on the same RDNA3 graphics architecture as the Radeon RX 7000 series dedicated graphics cards. The 760M only has eight of these CUs enabled, while the Radeon 740M uses four. All four CPUs have a TDP of 65W, which can be adjusted up and down if you have a socket AM5 motherboard with a B650 or X670 chipset.

CPU	MSRP/Street price	CPU/GPU Arch	Cores/threads	Radeon GPU	Clocks (Base/Boost)	Total cache (L2+L3)
*Ryzen 7 8700G*	$329	Zen 4/RDNA3	8c/16t	780M (12 CU)	4.2/5.1	24MB
Ryzen 7 7700	$329	Zen 4/RDNA2	8c/16t	Radeon (2 CU)	3.8/5.3	40MB
Ryzen 7 5700G	$198	Zen 3/Vega	8c/16t	Radeon (8 CU)	3.8/4.6	20MB
*Ryzen 5 8600G*	$229	Zen 4/RDNA3	6c/12t	760M (8 CU)	4.3/5.0	22MB
Ryzen 7 7600	$229	Zen 4/RDNA2	6c/12t	Radeon (2 CU)	3.8/5.1	38MB
Ryzen 5 5600G	$150	Zen 3/Vega	6c/12t	Radeon (7 CU)	3.9/4.4	19MB
Ryzen 5 5600GT	$140	Zen 3/Vega	6c/12t	Radeon (7 CU)	3.6/4.6	19MB
*Ryzen 5 8500G*	$179	Zen 4 and Zen 4c/RDNA3	6c/12t	740M (4 CU)	3.5/5.0	22MB
*Ryzen 5 5500GT*	$125	Zen 3/Vega	6c/12t	Radeon (? CUs)	3.6/4.4	19MB

A fourth processor, the quad-core Ryzen 8300G, will be available exclusively through PC OEMs. Expect to see it in lower-end desktop systems from the likes of HP and others, but you won’t be able to buy it at retail. It uses one large Zen 4 CPU core and three small Zen 4c cores.

The Ryzen 8700G and 8600G are priced at the exact same level as the 7700 and 7600, which have the same CPU architecture and core count. If you’re trying to decide which one to buy, note that the Ryzen 7000 chips’ higher boost clock speeds and larger pools of cache will help them outperform the 8000G processors, so they’re the ones to get if you plan to install a dedicated GPU right away or you just don’t care about integrated graphics performance.

AMD releases even more Ryzen 5000 CPUs, keeps its last-gen AM4 platform alive

AM4, AMD, amd radeon, AMD Ryzen, ryzen 5000, Tech, Zen 3 / Ryan Harris / January 8, 2024

the long goodbye —

New-old chips stick with the aging Zen 3, but could be good CPU upgrade options.

Andrew Cunningham – Jan 8, 2024 3: 30 pm UTC

Enlarge / Four new Ryzen 5000 CPUs, all riffs on existing Ryzen 5000 CPUs.

AMD

AMD announced the first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors today: a new lineup of socket AM5 CPUs that bring RDNA 3 integrated GPUs and an AI-accelerating NPU to its desktop platform for the first time. But the company also spent some time on new budget chips for its last-generation AM4 platform. The four new Ryzen 5000 processors cover everything from budget office desktops with integrated GPUs to cost-conscious gaming systems.

At the top of the range is the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, an 8-core CPU with an extra 64MB slab of L3 cache stacked on top of the main CPU die. At $249, it will be a little over $100 cheaper than the 5800X3D, but with the same core count, cache size, and a slightly lower maximum clock speed (4.1 GHz, down from 4.5 GHz). AMD compared it favorably to the Core i5-13600K in gaming workloads, a chip that currently retails for a bit over $280.

The Ryzen 7 5700 is a $175 8-core processor without 3D V-Cache that should still perform reasonably well in most workloads, though AMD’s spec sheet says that it has less cache than the 5700X and only supports PCI Express 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0. This indicates that the 5700 is actually a 5700G with the integrated graphics disabled; it will be a bit slower than the Ryzen 5700X, despite their similar names, core counts, and clock speeds. The Ryzen 5 5600GT and 5500GT are 6- and 4-core chips with Vega-based integrated graphics, both intended for lower-end systems. At $140 and $125, they essentially amount to minor clock speed bumps for the existing Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 3 5300G.

The new chips are the latest in a surprisingly long line of last hurrahs. Early 2022 brought us some new budget processors and the Ryzen 5800X3D, just a few months before the AM5 platform launched. And in mid-2023, AMD released a limited-edition Ryzen 5600X3D for people who could get to a local Micro Center store and buy one (as of this writing, a quick spot-check of several east coast Micro Centers showed that 5600X3D chips were still broadly available at that price).

It’s hard to recommend that anyone building a new PC go with the socket AM4 platform at this point—even these “new” chips are still using the old Zen 3 architecture and are broadly similar to older products that have been available since late 2020. But they’re still decent cost-efficient upgrade options for people who already have an AM4 motherboard that they use with a Ryzen 1000, 2000, or 3000 processor; if you upgrade from a Ryzen 1000-series chip, it will also help your PC meet Windows 11’s official system requirements, if that’s something you care about.

“AM4 continues to be a key part of our product portfolio,” AMD PR Manager Matthew Hurwitz told Ars when asked why AMD was still releasing new Ryzen 5000 CPUs. “New SKUs give users more options to fit their budget or use case.”

Enlarge / The complete, small-print list of all the AM4 and AM5 processors AMD will offer as of late January.

AMD

Hurwitz also told us that, unlike the 5600X3D, there would be no availability limitations for any of these new Ryzen 5000 chips. The company also doesn’t immediately plan to discontinue any other Ryzen 5000 CPUs that are still being sold, though “there is always a natural shift from older to newer SKUs as time passes.”

These new-old chips will all be available to purchase starting on January 31. We can at least be thankful that, unlike AMD’s laptop CPUs, the model numbers of these processors aren’t changing just because of the year they were released.

Listing image by AMD

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