Two new AMD Ryzen CPUs have just been given a global launch, and with cheaper prices than expected, but we recommend avoiding these new processors for gaming. Previously only available in China, the new AMD Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F are basically the same as the company’s latest APUs with integrated Radeon graphics, but they don’t have the built-in GPU, and their specs are drastically cut down elsewhere too.
Both these AMD CPUs have a massively reduced L3 cache, with the Ryzen 7 8700F only having 16MB, for example, compared with 32MB on the Ryzen 7 7700X. Even at their cheaper-than-expected prices, these new CPUs are still very unlikely to make it onto our best gaming CPU guide.
At the start of May 2024, Amazon jumped the gun on the Ryzen 7 8700F launch and listed it at a price of $299.99. That’s still the price of the CPU over on Amazon, but now that the CPU has officially launched in the US, it’s now appeared for sale at retailers such as NewEgg for $269, although it’s out of stock.
Of course, that $269 price is definitely an improvement on the originally-mooted $299 price and, unlike AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, the 8700G also has a neural processing unit (NPU) for AI. However, for gaming, $269 is still too expensive for the gaming performance on offer. For just an extra $20, the Ryzen 7 7700X has double the amount of L3 cache, as well as a much higher boost clock of 5.4GHz, compared with 5GHz for the Ryzen 7 8700F.
That’s not all, either. The Ryzen 7 8700F also only has 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes for your graphics card and SSD, compared with 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes on the Ryzen 7 7700X. That’s not a deal-breaker right now, unless you want a super-fast PCIe 5.0 SSD, such as the Crucial T705, but it’s a future-proofing problem you wouldn’t expect from a new CPU in 2024.
You can forgive these shortcomings on an APU, such as the Ryzen 5 8600G, as it saves you having to buy a graphics card if you’re happy running games at low settings, but these CPUs really need to be cheaper.
Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 8400F has appeared on NewEgg for $172, which is again cheaper than the originally-leaked price of $189.99, but not by enough to make this CPU worth buying. The 8400F doesn’t even have the 8700F’s AI hardware, and its boost clock of 4.7GHz is even lower than the 5GHz on the Ryzen 5 8600G. If you want a cheap six-core CPU for gaming, you’ll be much better off buying the $189 Ryzen 5 7600 instead, which boosts to 5.1GHz and has more L3 cache.
If you’re looking for a decent AMD gaming GPU, make sure you check out our Ryzen 7 7800X3D review, as this CPU has a huge 96MB of L3 cache, thanks to AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology, and it’s amazingly fast in games.