Notably, AMD’s Zen 4 CPU platform for 2023 does not include any desktop APUs. It only introduced APUs for mobile devices, but that will change in 2024. The business is preparing several 8000-series APUs that are priced reasonably and come with Zen 4 CPUs with RDNA 3 graphics. The initial internet benchmarks for these future chips indicate that they may be released as early as the CES trade exhibition in Las Vegas next week.
In contrast to the current 7000-series APUs, which are “2023” chips and only intended for mobile devices, the next APUs will be branded as 8000G series chips, indicating they are 2024 models. For their CPUs, AMD has implemented a somewhat contentious naming approach in which the year is indicated by the first number rather than the architecture. In any case, the 5000G devices from this series’ earlier desktop iterations employed Zen 3. We now have the first verified specifications for these future APUs thanks to the latest Zen 4 version that has surfaced on Geekbench. They are made for people who want a low-cost CPU with a little amount of gaming power through integrated graphics.
The Ryzen 5 8600G is the chip that has surfaced in the Geekbench database. It contains six CPU cores and twelve threads, as well as Radeon 760M graphics. The test for the CPU indicates a base speed of 4.35GHz and a boost clock of 5GHz, which are 600MHz and 450MHz faster than the 5600G, the CPU’s Zen 3 predecessor, respectively. Significant modifications have also been made to the GPU side of things. The 760M, formerly known as the “Radeon 5”, has been renamed, and remarkably, its boost speed has increased to 2.8GHz, which is 900MHz faster than the graphics of the previous chip.
We’re not clear why there is a disparity between the Geekbench listing, which claims the updated GPU has four compute units, and Videocardz, which indicates the GPU has six RDNA 3 compute units (CU). However, as it employs the most recent design from the firm, this should perform at a whole new level when compared to the previous version’s seven Vega CUs.
An additional intriguing detail from the web description is that an uncommon combination of a high-end MSI motherboard, the X670E, and a midrange APU was used for testing. This suggests that rather than being something internal to AMD, it was probably tested by a reviewer or MSI, suggesting that it might be ready for release shortly. It’s easy to do the arithmetic on this one, especially with CES rapidly approaching.