The Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU sequence was AMD’s first to incorporate a small built-in GPU by default to make the chips extra interesting for funds and enterprise desktops the place a devoted GPU could be overkill. These bare-bones GPUs will not play many video games, as we discovered after we examined them, however they are a dependable solution to gentle 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 accordance with the discharge notes for a slew of BIOS updates for Gigabyte motherboards. In line with Gigabyte, a brand new sequence of APUs for socket AM5 motherboards will probably 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 sequence, purportedly gleaned from this new AGESA model. In line with this, the chips will probably be named the Ryzen 8000G sequence, 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 sequence 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 items. The Ryzen 5 8600G will probably be a step down, with six Zen 4 CPU cores and a Radeon 760M with eight GPU compute items.
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 information would not inform us is how AMD will launch these chips. The Ryzen 4000G APUs and the Ryzen 3 5300G, for instance, had been accessible solely to PC corporations and never immediately bought 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 could or could 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 giant monolithic die with the CPU, GPU, and different capabilities all bundled collectively, moderately than separating issues into separate chiplets as AMD does for higher-end processors. The principle draw back of that is that there aren’t any 12- and 16-core CPUs accessible in AMD’s APUs.
AMD’s final APUs had been the Ryzen 5000G sequence, launched to the general public in mid-2021. These CPUs nonetheless used AMD’s growing older Vega GPU structure, and so they had been made for socket AM4 motherboards that use DDR4 RAM. Between the newer RDNA 3 GPU cores, the supply of sooner DDR5, and the better energy funds accessible 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 gives 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 embrace AMD’s “Ryzen AI” neural processing unit, which can be utilized to speed up some AI and machine studying options domestically.
