AMD is releasing its new processors (CPUs) soon, as part of the Ryzen 8000 series – and the top-of-the-line model, the Ryzen 7 8700G, appears to be an absolute monster when it comes to playing games, without the need to install a separate GPU.
Across the internet, early impressions and reviews of the Ryzen 7 8700G have been mostly positive. On the gaming and benchmarking front, the CPU appears to keep up with hardware configurations that include separate graphics units.
Hardware Unboxed has a brilliant section dedicated to benchmarking the game against many modern titles. In their testing, they found the CPU capable of producing 49fps in Baldurs Gate 3 (low graphics setting), 119fps in Counter-Strike 2 (medium), 132fps in Fortnite (low), 41fps in Cyberpunk 2077 (low), 68fps in Spider-Man Remastered (very low), and 74fps in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III 2023 (basic). All of these tests were performed with a resolution of 1080p on a 32GB system, and honestly, for a chip with an integrated GPU, these are all quite impressive results.
With frames like these, the new CPU outperforms many budget-oriented hardware configurations. Gamers Nexus, another highly respected PC components reviewer, noted some issues with the device, such as incorrectly applying STAPM (Skin Temperature Aware Power Management). These are protocols typically reserved for laptops and handhelds (like the ROG Ally and Steam Deck) that limit performance to make the device more comfortable in hand. However, these errors only affect a few areas of performance and will be patched in an upcoming update.
“We found out that STAPM is being incorrectly applied to the desktop parts. It shouldn’t be applied to the desktop parts. A future BIOS update should correct this behaviour,” AMD said to Gamers Nexus.
AMD confirmed to Gizmodo Australia that local pricing would be $550 for the Ryzen 7 8700G, and $389 for the less powerful 8600G model. Retailers are expected to go live with the new CPUs tomorrow in Australia.
That’s a sizeable amount of money, and you’d likely be able to get better performance with a separate GPU (For example, a ~$400 Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU and a ~$150 AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU would bump those graphics presets up at the least), but if you’re looking to do a discreet gaming PC build in a smaller case, or you don’t want a power-hungry gaming rig.
Image: AMD