AMD Ryzen 8000G “Phoenix 2” Desktop APUs Limited To PCIe 4.0 x4 For dGPU & PCIe 4.0 x2 For M.2 SSDs

AMD's Ryzen 8000G APUs falling under the Phoenix 2 die will have vastly limited memory and PCIe capabilities versus the Phoenix 1 dies & Ryzen 7000 CPUs.

Update: It looks like the single-channel memory may just be a typo since the 8300G page lists dual-channel memory.

AMD announced its Ryzen 8000G AM5 Desktop APUs in two flavors, the 8700G/8600G based on the Phoenix 1 dies and the 8500G/8300G based on the Phoenix 2 dies. Well, it looks like the Phoenix 2 dies will have very limited capabilities in regards to memory channels and PCIe lanes which might hinder their capabilities on budget platforms.

Based on the specs sheet of Gigabyte's latest B650E AORUS ELITE X AX ICE motherboard, the AMD Ryzen 8000G Phoenix 1 dies will offer PCIe 4.0 x8 functionality for discrete graphics cards and PCIe 4.0 x4 capabilities for the M.2 NVMe SSDs. These APUs will support dual-channel DDR5 RAM which is recommended for use to boost the capabilities of the integrated RDNA 3 (Radeon 700M) GPUs.

However, the Phoenix 2 dies cut back on both memory and PCIe support vastly. According to the specs sheet, AMD's Ryzen 8000G AM5 Desktop APUs based on the Phoenix 2 dies will only support single-channel DDR5 memory. The discrete graphics lanes have been cut from PCIe 4.0 x8 to PCIe x4 and the M.2 lanes have been reduced to PCIe 4.0 x2 from PCIe 4.0 x4. Both AMD Ryzen 8000G dies will not offer the full PCIe 5.0 x16 dGPU lanes as the standard Ryzen 7000 Desktop offerings.

The PCIe 4.0 x8 lanes should be good enough for most high-end graphics cards as AMD demoed its 8700G running a Radeon RX 7900 XTX and delivering good performance however the single DDR5 memory channel and the cut-back PCIe 4.0 x2 SSD support is going to be a drawback for the Phoenix 2 dies. AMD itself lists a total of 20 (16 Usable) PCIe 4.0 lanes for the Phoenix 1 dies but Phoenix 2 only gets 14 total (10 usable) lanes.

AMD Ryzen 8000G "Phoenix 2" APUs come with a hybrid Zen 4 and Zen 4C core configuration and make use of Radeon 740M iGPUs with just 4 compute units. While a single-channel DDR5 memory would offer enough bandwidth to run these iGPUs, it is still underwhelming that 1-channel support exists in 2024. The 8500G will be available in DIY and cost $179 US. A single 16 GB stick costs about $50-$60 US and that makes sense for a budget build. But everyone thinking that they will have the same set of features as the Phoenix 1 dies has to be informed that that's not going to be the case.