AMD Ryzen 8000G “Hawk Point” Desktop APUs Launched: Zen 4 CPU Combined With RDNA 3 GPU, 8700G $329, 8600G $229, 8500G $179

AMD has officially unveiled its Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APUs for AM5 Desktop PCs, combining Zen 4 CPU with RDNA 3 GPU cores.

We had a hint that AMD Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APUs were coming to the market with the recent BIOS releases from motherboard makers offering support for these chips. Now, AMD has officially unveiled four APUs for the AM5 Desktop PC platform which utilize a monolithic Zen 4 processor and RDNA 3 graphics core package and are compatible with any AM5 motherboard on the market.

Starting with the specifications, the AMD Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APU lineup includes a total of four SKUs which include the Ryzen 7 8700G, Ryzen 5 8600G, Ryzen 5 8500G, and Ryzen 3 8300G. At a bird's eye view, these APUs are technically the same on an architectural level but the 8500G and the 8300G are a hybrid combination of Zen 4 and Zen 4C cores for entry-level desktop PCs with an aggressive control over power.

The AMD Ryzen 7 8700G is the top Hawk Point APU, featuring 8 cores, 16 threads, 16 MB of L3, and 8 MB of L2 cache. This chip has a base clock of 4.2 GHz and a boost clock of 5.1 GHz and has a TDP of 65W. The chip features the Radeon 780M iGPU with 12 compute units clocked at 2900 MHz, the fastest clock yet on an RDNA 3 integrated graphics chip. The APU will be priced at $329 US.

Moving on, we have the AMD Ryzen 5 8600G which is a 6-core and 12-thread APU with 16 MB of L3 and 6 MB of L2 cache. This chip has a base clock of 4.3 GHz and a boost clock of 5.0 GHz with the same 65W TDP. The GPU is a Radeon 760M iGPU with 8 compute units clocked at 2800 MHz. The APU will be priced at $229 US.

Next up, we have the AMD Ryzen 5 8500G which is another 6-core and 12-thread chip that makes use of that aforementioned hybrid configuration with 2 Zen 4 and 4 Zen 4C cores with a base clock of 3.5 GHz and a boost clock of 5.0 GHz. The chip also carries a total of 22 MB cache but the Radeon GPU is reduced to the Radeon 740M with 4 Compute Units clocked at 2700 MHz.

Lastly, we have the Ryzen 3 8300G which is a 4-core and 8-thread chip with 1 Zen 4 and 3 Zen 4C cores. The chip features 12 MB of total cache, has a base clock speed of 3.4 GHz, and a boost clock speed of 4.9 GHz. It comes with a 65W TDP and the same Radeon 740M iGPU. The Ryzen 5 8500G will retail for $179 US while the Ryzen 3 8300G will be OEM only.

Another feature of the top two AMD Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APUs (8700G / 8600G) is that they are equipped with the same XDNA "Ryzen AI" NPU as the Ryzen 8040 series. This NPU is clocked at 1.6 GHz and offers a combined 39 TOPS of AI processing power with 16 TOPs coming directly from the NPU. Once again, this is a 60% increase over the Ryzen 7040's NPU which offered 10 TOPs. It's mentioned that the Ryzen AI enables over 100 AI experiences within Windows OS.

Coming to the most significant aspect of these chips, the gaming performance, AMD is touting a 4x uplift versus the Intel iGPU solutions offered on its UHD 770 graphics chips featured in 14th/13th Gen Desktop CPUs. According to the performance metrics published by AMD, the Ryzen 8000G line offers budget gamers the ability to enjoy 1080p @ 60 FPS gaming across a range of AAA titles with the use of Adrenaline features such as HYPR-RX and Fluid Motion.

In eSports titles, these APUs can deliver over 100 average FPS at 1080p (low settings) without the need to buy a separate graphics card.

And even when paired with a discrete graphics card, the AMD Zen 4 core architecture delivers a respectable performance versus the previous generation of chips. You can easily get over 100 FPS across a range of titles as AMD showcases in its demonstration where a Ryzen 7 8700G is running alongside a Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card. The 8 Zen 4 cores will be good enough to ensure minimal CPU-bound scenarios at lower resolutions such as 1080p which is still widely popular in the gaming space.

An interesting comparison made by AMD is a system-to-system comparison that compares an Intel Core i3-13400F + GTX 1650 build with a Ryzen 7 8700G + iGPU build. The Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APU offers similar and up to 31% better performance without the need to pair it with a discrete graphics card at a lower price ($329 AMD vs $410 Intel). Even in productivity benchmarks, the AMD Ryzen 8700G simply crushes the Core i5-13400F with up to 4.6x better performance in multi-thread workloads.

The AMD Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APUs including the Ryzen 7 8700G, Ryzen 5 8600G, and Ryzen 5 8500G will be available starting the 31st of January. Systems equipped with the Ryzen 3 8300G are also going to start appearing around the same time. As for users upgrading to the new chips, motherboard makers will be releasing new BIOS which comes with full support for these chips.

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