AMD Ryzen 7 8700G Review — 1080p-Capable Gaming Comes to Integrated Graphics

AMD's new $329 Ryzen 7 8700G and $229 Ryzen 5 8600G "Phoenix" chips bring the company's latest Zen 4 and RDNA 3 architectures to bear in the company's first APU refresh since 2021, promising limited 1080p-capable gaming and impressive 720p gaming for budget PC builds that don't have a discrete GPU. AMD says the 8000G series can handle most AAA games at 1080p, albeit at reduced fidelity settings, and we found several cases where that proved true. These chips aren’t intended to compete with or replace discrete GPUs, but they do deliver unmatched iGPU performance for desktop PCs.

AMD’s previous-gen Ryzen 5000G series, launched three years ago, set a high bar for entry-level gaming systems on the AM4 platform — one that Intel still hasn’t matched even with its newest processors. In keeping with tradition, AMD's new APU designs hail from the company's mobile processor lineup, leveraging the strength of the powerful in-built GPU to forge specialty chips for desktop PCs that will vie for a spot on our list of the Best CPUs for gaming.

AMD's new 65W APUs take a tremendous step forward — the company's older Ryzen 5000G 'Cezanne' series leveraged the Vega GPU architecture, while the new Ryzen 7 8700G rockets forward three generations to RDNA 3-powered Radeon 780M/760M graphics. That brings huge performance improvements in sheer graphical horsepower and supports new features, like AMD's Hyper-RX (aka HYPR-RX) suite, which includes Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) upscaling and AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) frame generation. These features are certainly welcome in the budget space where limited GPU horsepower, low resolutions, and low fidelity settings reign supreme. 

The CPU cores have also seen an upgrade from the Zen 3 CPU architecture with the 7nm process node to new Zen 4 CPU cores on the much more refined TSMC 4nm process. AMD also moved the chips from the AM4 platform with DDR4 memory to newer AM5 motherboards with DDR5 memory and upgraded connectivity options.

AMD splits the Ryzen 8000G series into two tiers: The high-end eight-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 8700G and six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 8600G are armed with full-featured Zen 4 cores, but the lower-end Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G have a mix of both standard Zen 4 cores and slower density-optimized Zen 4c cores, which we'll cover further below.

The two new flagship Ryzen 8000G APUs processors are also the world’s first desktop CPUs with an integrated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) engine to boost performance in AI workloads. That marks the second time AMD has beaten Intel to the punch with new AI features — AMD was also the first x86 chipmaker to bring an NPU to laptops. The XDNA NPU focuses on power efficiency over raw compute horsepower, so it's a better fit for laptops than the desktop PC, where power isn't as much of a concern and other forms of compute, like the GPU, offer much more performance.

The Ryzen 7 8700G offers heretofore unseen levels of gaming performance from the integrated graphics unit on a desktop PC processor, but the continued higher cost of DDR5 and AM5 motherboards muddy the value proposition for a chip that targets the low end of the market. Other options, like Intel's Core i3 series paired with discrete GPUs, also offer stout competition. Even though Intel doesn't have a directly comparable competitor, that only leaves a small niche for the Ryzen 7 8700G to thrive.

AMD Ryzen 7 8700G Specifications and Pricing

Interestingly, the new APUs come with a blue PCB that's differentiated from the standard Ryzen 7000 models, which come with a green PCB. AMD crafts the Ryzen 7 8700G and 8600G from a single monolithic piece of silicon with 25.4 billion transistors spread across 178mm^2. This is a significantly different design than the standard Ryzen 7000 processors, which have a combination of 5nm compute dies (6.5B transistors, 70mm^2) and a 6nm I/O die (3.4B transistors, 122mm^2).

The standard Ryzen 7000 processors have more aggregate die area and, therefore, have more room for higher amounts of L3 cache, which boosts performance in compute-bound workloads. The Ryzen 7000 chips are also designed for higher power envelopes and have higher frequencies, whereas the 8000G APUs are taken from the lower-power mobile-first design for the Ryzen 8000G "Phoenix" series and placed on a package that drops into the AM5 socket. This design is then tuned to a higher 65W TDP (88W peak) to boost performance; AMD also fully unlocks the 8000G chips for overclocking.

All 8000G APUs have a 65W TDP, but on a core-for-core basis, the Ryzen 7000 processors are still faster in pure CPU performance due to the L3 cache advantage. The Ryzen 7 8700G comes with a bundled Wraith Spire cooler, while the 8600G and 8500G come with the Wraith Stealth cooler.

AMD has split its 8000G series into two tiers: The Ryzen 7 8700G and the Ryzen 5 5600G are built on the Phoenix die with standard Zen 4 cores and the XDNA AI engine. The lower APUs, Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G, use Phoenix 2 (see below).

The previous-gen 5000G series chips supported DDR4-3200 and snapped into the AM4 platform, forging a true budget system. The value proposition isn't quite as clear with Ryzen 8000G: These chips drop into the AM5 platform with DDR5-5200 memory (and plenty of overclocking headroom). The AM5 motherboard ecosystem remains pricey, and DDR5 memory is still more expensive than DDR4. The Ryzen 8000G chips support 600-series chipsets, and this class of chip is best paired with the B650 chipset, though the A620 is also attractive.

The Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G’s XDNA AI engine runs at 1.6 GHz, a 60% improvement over the inaugural Ryzen 7040 mobile series (those processors never came to the desktop PC). The XDNA engine delivers roughly the same 16 TOPS of INT8 (only) performance as the mobile variants, though it is possible some workloads could generate more performance as a result of the PC’s higher power thresholds. AMD says the chips' CPU, GPU, and XDNA engines combine to deliver up to 39 TOPS of overall AI inference performance.

The standard Ryzen 7000 desktop processors expose 24 usable PCIe 5.0 lanes to the user, but the Phoenix products only expose 16 usable PCIe 4.0 lanes, which is a big step back on available bandwidth due to both fewer lanes and a reduction in PCIe interface speed. However, the x8 PCIe 4.0 connection to the CPU won't be a constraint with current GPUs — though make no mistake, these chips aren't really meant to be used with a discrete GPU — and the system has two x4 NVMe SSD connections available. This should be enough connectivity for a lower-end platform.

The previous-gen Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 5 5600G come with less powerful Vega graphics with either 7 or 8 CUs. However, only one compute unit (CU) and 100 MHz separated the graphics engines on the prior-gen models. In contrast, the new Ryzen chips have a much larger gap: The 8700G's Radeon 780M iGPU has 12 CU compared to the 8600G's Radeon 760M with eight CU. This resulted in a larger performance gap between the two models than we saw with the prior gen. However, since memory bandwidth is the primary constraint for the iGPUs, overclocking the lower-end model could help level the playing field. 

Phoenix 2

AMD uses the Phoenix 2 die with the Ryzen Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G, meaning these two lower chips have a mix of both standard Zen 4 cores and slower density-optimized Zen 4c cores. They also don't come with the AI accelerator, so they won’t have the Ryzen AI badge on their product box. We aren't reviewing these chips yet, but they'll be under the microscope soon. Given the massive difference in architecture, it is wise to understand the differences if you're considering these as lower-cost options.

AMD’s Ryzen 5 8500G has two Zen 4 cores paired with four density-optimized Zen 4c cores, while the Ryzen 3 8300G has one Zen 4 core with three Zen 4c cores. As with Intel's E-cores, AMD's Zen 4c cores are designed to take up less space on a processor die than the regular Zen 4 cores while providing enough horsepower for less demanding tasks. This saves power and delivers more computing performance per square millimeter than was previously possible (deep dive here). But the similarities end there.

Unlike Intel, AMD employs the same microarchitecture and supports the same features with its smaller cores as it does with the larger cores. However, the Zen 4c cores do run at lower clock speeds and deliver less peak performance than standard cores. Notably, the maximum boost frequency of the Zen 4c cores is actually lower than the base frequency of the standard Zen 4 cores, which stands in contrast to Intel's approach. We'll put this arrangement to the test soon.

Both of these chips come with a Radeon 740M iGPU with a mere four CUs. The Phoenix 2 chips come with 10 usable PCIe 4.0 lanes, with four dedicated to graphics and the other six split across M.2, USB, and WiFi. AMD says the M.2 SSD should have a x4 connection with the rest of the I/O split across two lanes, but the end configuration is up to the ODM.

For now, let's take a look at how the Ryzen 7 8700G fares in our gaming benchmarks.