One of the most desired desktop chips designed for low-cost systems has been AMD's APUs or Accelerated Processing Units. The last time we saw AMD launch a series of APUs for desktops was back in 2021, with the release of their Cezanne-based Ryzen 5000G series, which combined Zen 3 cores with Radeon Vega-based integrated graphics. During CES 2024, AMD announced the successor to Cezanne, with new Phoenix-based APUs, aptly named the Ryzen 8000G series.
The latest Ryzen 8000G series is based on their mobile Phoenix architecture and has been refitted for AMD's AM5 desktop platform. Designed to give users and gamers on a budget a pathway to build a capable yet cheaper system without the requirement of a costly discrete graphics card hanging over their head, the Ryzen 8000G series consists of three SKUs, ranging from an entry-level Phoenix 2 based Zen 4 and Zen 4c hybrid chip, all the way to a full Zen 4 8C/16T model with AMD's latest mobile RDNA3 integrated graphics.
The Ryzen 7 8700G with 8C/16T, 16 MB of L3 cache, and AMD's Radeon 780M graphics are sitting at the top of the pile. The other chip we're taking a look at today is the middle-of-the-road AMD Ryzen 5 8600G, which has a 6C/12T configuration with fully-fledged mobile Zen 4 cores, with a third option limited to just OEMs currently, with four cores, including one full Zen 4 core and three smaller and more efficient Zen 4c cores.
The other notable inclusion of AMD's Ryzen 8000G series is it brings their Ryzen AI NPU into the desktop market for the first time. It is purposely built for AI inferencing workloads such as Generative AI and is optimized and designed to be more efficient and improve AI performance.
Much of the onus on the capability of AMD's Ryzen 8000G series will be how much of an impact the switch to Zen 4 and RDNA3 integrated graphics commands over the Ryzen 5000G series with Zen 3 and Vega, which is already three years old at this point. The other element is how the mobile-based Phoenix Zen 4 cores compare to the full-fat Raphael Zen 4 cores. In our review and analysis of the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G APUs, we aim to find out.
