AMD’s $229 Ryzen 5 8600G “Phoenix” brings the company’s latest Zen 4 and RDNA 3 architectures in a slimmer, more cost-effective package than the flagship $329 8-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 8700G. Offers. The 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 8600G delivers up to 2x the performance of previous generation models for gaming workloads, with limited 1080p support and impressive 720p gaming for budget PC builds without discretes. Offers. GPU. This blend of price and performance makes the 8600G the best value of AMD’s new 8000G series processors, and a place on our list of the best CPUs for gaming.
AMD says the 8000G series can handle most AAA games at 1080p, but only at reduced fidelity settings, and we’ve found a few cases where that’s true. However, these chips are not intended to directly compete with or replace discrete GPUs, but provide unparalleled iGPU performance for desktop PCs.
The new Ryzen 7 8600G jumps three generations of GPU architecture from Vega to AMD’s RDNA 3-powered Radeon 760M graphics with eight GPU cores. It also supports new features such as AMD’s Hyper-RX (also known as HYPR-RX) suite, which includes Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) upscaling and AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) frame generation. These features can be a game-changer for the budget space, where limited GPU horsepower, low resolution, and low-fidelity settings are common.
AMD has also refreshed its CPU cores, moving from 12nm Zen 3 to Zen 4 architecture manufactured on the more efficient TSMC 4nm process, and from an aging AM4 platform with DDR4 memory to DDR5 memory and more modern connectivity. I moved to a new AM5 motherboard with options.
| CPU | arch. | price | Cores/Threads (Zen 4 + 4c) | Base/Boost Frequency (Zen 4 Core) | Base/Boost Frequency (Zen 4c Core) | TDP | L3 (MB) | GPU/Core | GPU frequency (MHz) |
| Ryzen 7 8700G | zen 4 | $329 | 8/16 | 4.2/5.1 | Not applicable | 65W | twenty four | Radeon 780M – 12 CU | 2900 |
| Ryzen 5 8600G | zen 4 | $229 | 6/12 | 4.3/5.0 | Not applicable | 65W | twenty two | Radeon 760M – 8CU | 2800 |
| Ryzen 5 8500G | Zen 4 + Zen 4c | $179 | 6 / 12 (2 + 4) | 4.1 / 5.0 (3.5 GHz global base) | 3.2/3.7 | 65W | twenty two | Radeon 740M – 4CU | 2800 |
| Ryzen 3 8300G | Zen 4 + Zen 4c | OEM only | 4 / 8 (1 + 3) | 4.0 / 4.9 (3.4 GHz global base) | 3.2/3.6 | 65W | 12 | Radeon 740M – 4CU | 2600 |
AMD has divided the Ryzen 8000G series into two performance tiers with different architectures. The high-end 8-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 8700G and 6-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 8600G are powered by full-featured Zen 4 cores and the Ryzen AI Engine. In contrast, the lower-end Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G have a mix of standard Zen 4 cores and slower, density-optimized Zen 4c cores, and lack the Ryzen AI Engine. For more information on lower models, please see the Phoenix 2 section of this page.
The two new flagship Ryzen 8000G APU processors are also the world’s first desktop CPUs with an integrated neural processing unit (NPU) engine, called Ryzen AI, to improve performance for AI workloads. There aren’t many real-world uses for this engine yet, but NPUs are more focused on power efficiency than raw computational horsepower. Therefore, it is more suitable for laptop PCs than desktop PCs. On desktop PCs, power is less of a concern and other forms of computing such as GPUs provide more performance for AI work.
The Ryzen 5 8600G doesn’t have any of the graphics processing power of a discrete GPU, and it’s about 10% slower than the high-end Ryzen 7 8700G. However, it costs $100 (44%) less, a solid trade-off for losing two CPU cores and four GPU cores. Additionally, lower prices make it easier to accept the continued high cost of DDR5 and AM5 motherboards, which undermines the value proposition of lower-end chips.
The 8600G faces stiff competition from systems built around Intel’s Core i3 or lower-end Ryzen models paired with discrete GPUs. So the Ryzen 5 8600G is a much better value than the 8700G, but some people are interested in building high-performance systems without a discrete graphics card, such as building SFF or passive cooling systems. For some, it remains a niche purchase.
AMD Ryzen 5 8600G specifications and price
All 8000G APUs have a TDP of 65W, but on a per-core basis, Ryzen 7000 processors are still faster in terms of pure CPU performance due to their larger L3 cache capacity. The Ryzen 5 8600G and 8500G come bundled with the Wraith Stealth cooler, and the Ryzen 7 8700G comes bundled with the Wraith Spire cooler.
Ryzen 8000G chips have a history in mobile. These are ported from AMD’s laptop lineup. We discuss the architectural components in our Ryzen 7 8700G review, so please refer there for more information.
| CPU | arch. | price | Cores/Threads (Zen 4 + 4c) | Base/Boost Frequency (Zen 4 Core) | Base/Boost Frequency (Zen 4c Core) | TDP | L3 (MB) | GPU/Core | GPU frequency (MHz) |
| Ryzen 7 8700G | zen 4 | $329 | 8/16 | 4.2/5.1 | Not applicable | 65W | twenty four | Radeon 780M – 12 CU | 2900 |
| Ryzen 7 5700G | zen 3 | $359 | 8/16 | 3.8/4.6 | Not applicable | 65W | 16 | RX Vega 8 | the year of 2000 |
| Ryzen 5 8600G | zen 4 | $229 | 6/12 | 4.3/5.0 | Not applicable | 65W | twenty two | Radeon 760M – 8CU | 2800 |
| Ryzen 5 5600G | zen 3 | $259 | 6/12 | 3.9/4.4 | Not applicable | 65W | 16 | RX Vega 7 | 1900 |
| Ryzen 5 8500G | Zen 4 + Zen 4c | $179 | 6 / 12 (2 + 4) | 4.1 / 5.0 (3.5 GHz global base) | 3.2/3.7 | 65W | twenty two | Radeon 740M – 4CU | 2800 |
| Ryzen 3 8300G | Zen 4 + Zen 4c | OEM only | 4 / 8 (1 + 3) | 4.0 / 4.9 (3.4 GHz global base) | 3.2/3.6 | 65W | 12 | Radeon 740M – 4CU | 2600 |
| Ryzen 3 5300G | zen 3 | OEM only | 4/8 | 4.0/4.2 | Not applicable | 65W | 8 | RX Vega 6 | 1700 |
The Ryzen 7 8700G and 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”.
The previous generation 5000G series chips supported DDR4-3200 and were built into the AM4 platform, creating a truly low-cost system with cheap memory and a wide range of value boards. The value of Ryzen 8000G is less clear. He needs an AM5 platform with at least DDR5-5200 memory, but if you can spend a little more DDR5-6000 is the way to go. AM5 motherboards are still not as affordable as competing platforms, and DDR5 memory is still more expensive than DDR4. Ryzen 8000G chips support 600 series chipsets. Chips of this class are a natural combination with his B650 chipset, but the A620 is also attractive.
The Ryzen 5 8600G’s XDNA AI Engine runs at 1.6 GHz and delivers 16 TOPS of INT8 performance, almost the same as the mobile version. According to AMD, the combination of the high-end Ryzen 7 87000G’s CPU, GPU, and XDNA engine can deliver up to 39 TOPS of overall AI inference performance, but the 8600G’s peak is slightly lower due to lower CPU and GPU core counts. That’s what it means.
The standard Ryzen 7000 desktop processor exposes 24 usable PCIe 5.0 lanes, while the Ryzen 8700G and 8600G only expose 16 usable PCIe 4.0 lanes. This is a significant setback in available bandwidth due to both lane reduction and PCIe interface speed reduction. However, x8 PCIe 4.0 connectivity to the CPU is not a constraint with current GPUs. Additionally, these chips aren’t actually intended for use with a separate GPU. The system has two x4 NVMe SSD connections available, which is more than enough for a low-end platform.
The previous generation Ryzen 5 5600G was a killer value APU that delivered up to 96% of the performance of the top model, but this generation has a difference.
The previous generation Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 5 5600G come with Vega graphics with seven or eight compute units (CUs). However, the previous generation model’s graphics engine was separated by only one computing unit (CU) and 100 MHz. In contrast, the new Ryzen chips have a much larger difference, with the 8600G’s Radeon 760M having 8 CUs versus the 8700G’s Radeon 780M iGPU having 12 CUs. This resulted in a larger performance difference between the two models than we saw on the previous generation, but since memory bandwidth is the main constraint for iGPUs, overclocking the 5600G is not a problem, as explained on the next page. helps level the playing field. .
