It’s been a long time coming, but AMD has finally lifted the lid on its new Ryzen 8000-series APU lineup with proper integrated RDNA 3 graphics. The veteran chip manufacturer is making some bold claims about its gaming performance, including the ability to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 63fps without a separate graphics card. The new lineup includes the 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and 6-core Ryzen 5 8600G, as well as a couple of cheaper options.
The last half-decent desktop APUs were the Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 5 5600G way back in 2021, with the latter making it onto our guide to the best gaming CPU, largely thanks to the lack of compelling integrated graphics competition from Intel. However, those two CPUs use the archaic AMD Vega GPU architecture, while the new chips have full-on RDNA 3 GPUs, complete with ray tracing cores.
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G
Let’s start with the flagship Ryzen 7 8700G, which has eight cores and the ability to execute 16 concurrent threads. Don’t be fooled by the ‘8’ at the beginning of its model name, though – this CPU is based on the same Zen 4 architecture as Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, such as the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and uses the same Socket AM5 platform with DDR5 memory.
In terms of the core CPU spec, the Ryzen 7 8700G is a bit weaker than AMD’s existing 8-core Zen 4 desktop CPUs. It still has the same 1MB of L2 cache per core, but there’s only 16MB of shared L3 cache shared between the cores, compared to 32MB on the Ryzen 7 7700X. The Ryzen 7 8700G also has a lower boost clock speed of 5.10GHz, compared with 5.40GHz on the Ryzen 7 7700X.
AMD is also making a big deal about the APU’s new neural processing unit (NPU), making it the first desktop PC CPU to come with dedicated AI processing power, after Intel’s Meteor Lake architecture was delayed.
The big news, of course, is the integrated GPU. The Ryzen 7 8700G has an integrated Radeon 780M GPU, which AMD first released in 2023 for the mobile market. It incorporates 12 RDNA 3 compute units, giving you 768 stream processors, as well as 12 ray tracing cores.
As a point of comparison, the Radeon RX 7600 has 2,048 stream processors, as well as 8GB of memory, so the Ryzen 7 8700G isn’t anywhere near as fast as even a budget dedicated GPU, but it does enable you to build a gaming system into a tiny small form factor case without the need for a graphics card.
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G gaming performance
AMD is making some bold claims about the gaming performance of the Ryzen 7 8700G’s integrated GPU. In the company’s own benchmarks, the APU managed to average 63fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p, 68fps in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and 89fps in Hitman 3.
All these results are admittedly achieved at low detail settings, but they’re great for an integrated GPU. The new APU clearly benefits from access to DDR5 memory, rather than the DDR4 memory of previous APUs, as well as having AMD’s latest RDNA 3 GPU architecture at its disposal.
AMD likens the performance to that of a GeForce GTX 1650, so it’s not going to set the world alight, but it’s a big step up from previous integrated graphics systems for gaming. It seemingly has enough power for esports too, running League of Legends at 236fps.
AMD has also taken aim at Intel’s integrated graphics, claiming that the Ryzen 7 8700G is 4x the speed of the Core i7-14700K when running Hitman 3 without using a discrete GPU.
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G specs
| AMD Ryzen 7 8700G | |
| Cores | 8 |
| Threads | 16 |
| Max boost clock | 5.1GHz |
| L2 cache | 8MB (1MB per core) |
| L3 cache | 16MB |
| Integrated GPU | Radeon 780M |
| GPU stream processors | 768 |
| GPU RT cores | 12 |
| TDP | 65W |
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G price
The AMD Ryzen 7 8700G price is $329, which puts it in competition with the Intel Core i5-14600K. It’s expensive for a CPU that can only boost to 5.1GHz and doesn’t have 3D V-Cache, however.
In addition to the Ryzen 7 8700G, AMD has also revealed the Ryzen 5 8600G, which has six cores (12 threads) and boosts to 5GHz. It also has a Radeon 760M GPU, which has just eight compute units, giving you 512 stream processors.
We’re really glad to see AMD finally bringing out some CPUs with full RDNA 3 gaming graphics, and while they’re not going to challenge the latest discrete GPUs, they look like they’re going to be fine for 1080p gaming at low settings, even in demanding titles.
Make sure you also read the rest of our CES 2024 coverage, including hands-on experiences live from the show in Las Vegas.