AMD's Ryzen 8000G lineup gets a price drop — high-end integrated graphics get cheaper ahead of 9000-series release

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$20-30 price dips in MSRP for AMD's best APUs until Strix Point

AMD Ryzen 5 8600G
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

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

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.

Dallin Grimm
Dallin Grimm
Contributing Writer

Dallin Grimm is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has been building and breaking computers since 2017, serving as the resident youngster at Tom's. From APUs to RGB, Dallin has a handle on all the latest tech news. 

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4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • DS426
    AMD is keeping the $100 price gap between the 8700G and 8600G? Although the $30 price drop on the 8700G makes it more palatable, this continues to make the 8600G the real winner.

    Guess there's always a price premium for the top chip in a certain product line, eh.
    Reply
  • The 8500G also uses a weaker 740M graphics engine than the Radeon 760M in the 8700G/8600G,

    Correction. The 8700G APU actually sports the 780M iGPU with 12 CUs.

    8600G comes with the 760M with 8CUs instead.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    8700G need to be priced 267
    8600G 179
    8500g 129

    Price amd ask for that cpu you can catch a I3 and a discrete graphics card...
    another HIT is PCIe config on these cpu... making it good for a mediocre workstation.

    at full 16 pcie lanes cpu it's hard to config a GOOD machine... Now think with 8 pcie lanes?
    Reply
  • greenreaper
    Admin said:
    The 8000G series is the only line of processors on the current-gen AM5 socket which offer integrated graphics...

    Are we not forgetting the 7000-series iGPUs?

    I assure you, the 2 CU AMD Radeon™ Graphics in my Ryzen 7600 is quite capable, all things considered, especially overclocked to 2660MHz and undervolted to -14 GFX core offset (helps improve all-core speeds as it reduces the temps - the CPU will otherwise be downclocked to favour the iGPU).

    VRAM is a little slow, but on the plus side there's 64GB of it, plus the full 32MB CPU L3 cache as opposed to 16MB on the 8700G.
    Reply