AMD has lowered prices on its Ryzen 8000G series of desktop APUs across all retailers. As spotted by VideoCardz, AMD's entire suite of current-gen processors with integrated graphics has taken price drops up to $30, indicating a planned change ahead of Ryzen 9000's release in July.
The Ryzen 8000G desktop series first released in January of this year after a long wait; the last time AMD released desktop APUs before the 8000G series was in 2021. The 8000G series is the only line of processors on the current-gen AM5 socket which offer integrated graphics or an NPU, thanks to the Phoenix iGPU cores borrowed from AMD's Hawk Point mobile APUs. Today, three models of the Phoenix chips are available for sale at the new prices: the Ryzen 7 8700G, Ryzen 5 8600G, and Ryzen 5 8500G (the Ryzen 3 8300G was also released with the line but has never been available for sale to consumers).
Ryzen 8000G new prices and where to find them
- Ryzen 7 8700G - $299, down from $329
- Ryzen 5 8600G - $199, down from $229
- Ryzen 5 8500G - $159, down from $179
We reviewed the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G when they initially released back in January, and found them both to be alright, giving ratings of 3 and 3.5 stars respectively. It was difficult to recommend the 8700G at MSRP due to its strange positioning in the market. Nudget chips and the AM5 platform still don't mix perfectly thanks to the higher prices of AM5 motherboards and DDR5 RAM compared to the older AM4 platform and its DDR4 RAM. But the Ryzen 5 8600G is currently our pick for the best CPU for entry-level gaming, thanks to it having 90% of the performance of its bigger brother the 8700G for $100 less, and this recommendation is even easier with the $30 price drop.
The Ryzen 5 8500G is unique in the lineup for its completely different architecture; while the 8700G and 8600G both use only AMD's Zen 4 processor cores, the 8500G utilizes some of the weaker Zen 4c cores with some Zen 4, an unholy split first seen on AMD's Hawk Point mobile APUs. The 8500G also uses a weaker 740M graphics engine than the Radeon 760M in the 8700G/8600G, two significant sacrifices for only $40 less than the Ryzen 8600G.
The price shift for the three APUs likely comes as a harbinger for the arrival of the Ryzen 9000 series in July. Recent leaks suggest a launch date of July 31 for the new processors, which will reportedly usher in a 16% IPC improvement over the previous-gen for the new "Granite Ridge" line of Ryzen 9, 7, and 5 chips.
AMD is set to beat Intel in some key battles across the desktop CPU space with the new Zen 5-based 9000 series. Add to this a drop in prices in its APU line which Intel has no alternatives to, and AMD is clearly aiming to win some ground back in the never-ending skirmish between Team Red and Team Blue.
