AMD will soon begin selling the latest APUs for desktop PCs – the Ryzen 8000G family of chips. In anticipation of the start of sales, the specialized press published reviews of two older new products: the eight-core Ryzen 7 8700G and the six-core Ryzen 5 8600G. Reviewers praised the powerful integrated graphics and overall very good performance, but the price of the chips really spoils the overall picture.
New generation AMD desktop hybrid processors combine Zen 4 cores (and in younger models also Zen 4c) and RDNA3 graphics. The Ryzen 5 8600G processor has six cores with 12 threads, a base frequency of 4.3 GHz and a maximum frequency of 5.0 GHz. Its integrated Radeon 760M graphics includes 8 execution units (512 stream processors) and runs at up to 2800 MHz. In turn, the flagship Ryzen 7 8700G has eight cores, sixteen threads and frequencies of 4.2 and 5.1 GHz. There is a more powerful integrated graphics Radeon 780M with 12 execution units (768 stream processors) and a frequency of 2900 MHz. Both chips also have a built-in XDNA AI engine. The recommended cost of these processors will be $229 and $329, respectively.
AMD itself, at the time of the announcement of the Ryzen 8000G, noted that the integrated graphics of these chips are capable of outperforming the GeForce GTX 1650. Colleagues from the Computer Base website decided to check the last statement, and it turned out that the system with Intel Core i5-12500 and GeForce GTX 1650 is much faster – on average by 31%. Also, the new products failed to overtake the combination of the Ryzen 5 7500F and the discrete Radeon RX 6400 – they turned out to be on average 30% faster. In addition, the latest pair of CPU and GPU will cost significantly less than the Ryzen 7 8700G: in Germany, the Ryzen 5 7500F will cost 169 euros, and the price of the RX 6400 starts at 120 euros. It’s worth adding here that in some rather rare and specific cases, the most powerful integrated AMD graphics can still compete with the GeForce GTX 1650 and Radeon RX 6500 XT. We wrote about this in a separate article .
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AMD also claimed that the older models of the new series are aimed at inexpensive gaming PCs that can provide comfortable gaming at a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels. And indeed it is. New processors are really capable of providing comfortable gaming in 1080p resolution, albeit with low graphics settings. Even in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the older Ryzen 7 8700G showed a completely playable 28 FPS. In other games, the results were better: in Baldur's Gate 3 both chips showed more than 30 FPS, in Dota 2 – from 66 FPS and above, and in Counter Strike 2 – more than 105 FPS.
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As for the performance of the processor part alone, here the Ryzen 7 8700G showed the level of the Core i5-12600K and Ryzen 7 7700, while the Ryzen 5 8600G was approximately on the same level with the Ryzen 5 7500F, Ryzen 5 5600X and Core i5-13400F. Let us add that, quite expectedly, the new products are ahead of their predecessors by a noticeable margin.
The TechSpot resource tested only the older Ryzen 7 8700G and the results obtained generally coincide with the results of Computer Base. For example, in F1 2023 the chip managed to achieve 125 FPS, which is 2.2 times more compared to the Ryzen 7 5700G. And in Spider-Man Remastered the new product produced 68 FPS. Also here the integrated graphics of the Ryzen 7 8700G were compared with combinations of different processors and the Radeon RX 6500 XT. Quite expectedly, the new product turned out to be weaker in most cases, surpassing only the Ryzen 7 5700G and Radeon RX 6500 XT.
Reviewers also noted that the performance of the Ryzen 8000G in games is largely influenced by RAM. The best results in most cases were achieved with DDR5-7200 memory, and the performance increase from memory overclocking ranged from 3 to 19%, according to Computer Base. In turn, TechSpot tests showed that switching from DDR5-5200 to DDR5-7200 allows you to get an extra 10 FPS or even more.
As mentioned above, the Ryzen 7 8700G turns out to be unreasonably expensive. For the same money, you can get higher performance in games by purchasing, albeit a weaker central processor, but a noticeably faster video card. Even if we are talking about budget solutions. For example, TechSpot tests showed that the Core i3-12100F and Radeon RX 6600 can provide more than double the gaming performance advantage. Or, if you can spend a little more, you can take the Ryzen 5 7600 and Radeon RX 6600, getting about 2.5 times higher performance. ” The idea of a gaming APU for budget users always sounds great, but in practice they're simply never fast enough ,” TechSpot notes.
At the same time, the Ryzen 5 8600G looks like a much more interesting and balanced option. It allows you to comfortably play most modern games and costs less than a combination of a simple modern processor and a discrete video card, so it can be considered a good option for budget gaming.