The Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU collection was AMD’s first to incorporate a small built-in GPU by default to make the chips extra interesting for price range and enterprise desktops the place a devoted GPU can be overkill. These bare-bones GPUs will not play many video games, as we discovered after we examined them, however they are a dependable method to mild up a few displays.
AMD mentioned on the time that it additionally deliberate to proceed making desktop APUs, the corporate’s longstanding terminology for a Ryzen CPU paired with a extra highly effective built-in Radeon GPU, however we’ve not heard something a few new Ryzen desktop APU since. That might be altering early subsequent yr, in keeping with the discharge notes for a slew of BIOS updates for Gigabyte motherboards. In line with Gigabyte, a brand new collection of APUs for socket AM5 motherboards will likely be launched beginning in January 2024, and so they’ll be suitable with any present socket AM5 motherboard working model 1.1.0.0 or newer of AMD’s AGESA firmware.
Tom’s {Hardware} has a breakdown of the Ryzen 8000G collection, purportedly gleaned from this new AGESA model. In line with this, the chips will likely be named the Ryzen 8000G collection, and so they’ll use the identical “Phoenix” silicon that AMD makes use of in its Ryzen 7040U laptop computer processors and the Ryzen Z1 collection of chips for gaming handhelds.
The highest-end chip would be the Ryzen 7 8700G, which can mix eight Zen 4 CPU cores and a Radeon 780M GPU with 12 RDNA 3 compute models. The Ryzen 5 8600G will likely be a step down, with six Zen 4 CPU cores and a Radeon 760M with eight GPU compute models.
The Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G will step right down to a special Phoenix variant with a mixture of high-performance Zen 4 cores and high-efficiency Zen 4c cores—two P-cores and 4 E-cores for the 8500G, and one P-core and three E-cores for the 8300G. Each will include a Radeon 740M GPU with 4 CUs.
What the BIOS knowledge does not inform us is how AMD will launch these chips. The Ryzen 4000G APUs and the Ryzen 3 5300G, for instance, have been out there solely to PC firms and never immediately offered to DIY PC builders.
Regardless of the “Ryzen 8000” branding, these new APUs use the identical Zen 4 CPU structure as current-generation Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs. We might or might not see future Ryzen 8000 CPUs with up to date Zen 5 CPU cores subsequent yr. Architecturally, the primary distinction between AMD’s APUs and the common Ryzen desktop CPUs is that the APUs are nonetheless usually one massive monolithic die with the CPU, GPU, and different features all bundled collectively, somewhat than separating issues into separate chiplets as AMD does for higher-end processors. The principle draw back of that is that there are not any 12- and 16-core CPUs out there in AMD’s APUs.
AMD’s final APUs have been the Ryzen 5000G collection, launched to the general public in mid-2021. These CPUs nonetheless used AMD’s getting old Vega GPU structure, and so they have been made for socket AM4 motherboards that use DDR4 RAM. Between the newer RDNA 3 GPU cores, the supply of quicker DDR5, and the larger energy price range out there to desktop APUs, we’d anticipate the top-end Ryzen 8700G to handily outperform each the older 5700G and the low-wattage 7040-series laptop computer chips. RDNA 3 supplies some helpful gaming and video options, like hardware-accelerated AV1 video encoding and hardware-accelerated ray-tracing.
Utilizing the Phoenix silicon additionally means that the higher-end CPUs may embody AMD’s “Ryzen AI” neural processing unit, which can be utilized to speed up some AI and machine studying options domestically.
