Colorful Technology Company Limited, a leading brand in gaming PC components, gaming laptops, and Hi-fi audio products, proudly presents the CVN B650M GAMING FROZEN motherboard. This motherboard is our first AMD AM5 motherboard that supports the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series and the latest AMD Ryzen 8000 Series processors that feature the groundbreaking AMD Ryzen AI technology as well as support for AVX-512.

The CVN B650M GAMING FROZEN supports the latest AMD Ryzen 8000G Series APUs with AMD Ryzen AI technology. It also supports the AMD Ryzen 7000 and AMD Ryzen 7000 X3D Series processors with 3D V-Cache Technology, as well as support for the future AM5 processors. AMD Ryzen AI brings the power of personal computing closer to you on an AI PC, unlocking a whole new level of efficiencies for work, collaboration, and innovation so that you can stay connected better with the world around you.

AMD Linux engineers have been working on "GFX1150" and "GFX1151" targets for a while—official references to "Strix 1/Strix Point" and "Strix Point Halo" have appeared several times on official development channels. Phoronix's head honcho—Michael Larabel—monitors these activities with keen interest, his latest finding indicates that Team Red is preparing open-source RadeonSI/RADV driver support for the GFX1151 IP. Their MESA 24.1 update merges in GPU enablement for possible high-end "Strix Point Halo" laptop processors—tech tipsters believe that these chiplet variants could sport up to sixteen Zen 5 CPU cores and forty RDNA 3.5 GPU cores.

AMD's enablement of the "GFX1150/Strix Point" GPU appeared online late last month—these monolithic laptop chips are alleged to sit below "Strix Point Halo" in Team Red's product hierarchy. Insiders suggest that the best configurations could house twelve Zen 5 CPU cores and sixteen RDNA 3.5 GPU cores. Phoronix posited that the "RDNA 3 refresh" graphics solution: "is just rumored for select APUs, while ultimately we'll see where this GFX 11.5.1 IP is found if for some further upgraded APU or something more special. In any event the open-source Linux driver support is coming together." According to official product roadmaps, the initial batch of "Strix Point" mobile chips are expected ship later this year—representing a proper next-gen upgrade over current "Hawk Point" offerings.

Some of the earliest signs are emerging that AMD's mobile processor or desktop APU silicon that succeeds "Strix Point" being codenamed "Sound Wave." AMD tends to come up with quirky internal codenames for upcoming projects, mostly to zero in on the source of leaks, so "Sound Wave" as a codename is subject to change with time. While the upcoming 4 nm "Strix Point" and "Strix Halo" chips implement the "Zen 5" CPU microarchitecture and RDNA 3+ graphics architecture, besides XDNA 2 based NPU with a generational tripling in AI TOPS; Wccftech believes that "Sound Wave" could be an AMD processor of comparable class to "Strix Point," which implements the "Zen 6" CPU microarchitecture, which AMD has planned for a 2025-26 timeframe.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this leak is the foundry node, with the original source over at Korean tech blog Gamma0burst referencing 3 nm. This is the final node family from TSMC to implement FinFET transistors before the foundry transitions to nanosheets with N2. It's likely that AMD chooses one of the more advanced variants of TSMC's 3 nm nodes, such as the N3P or N3X, because 2025-26 will see rival Intel get close to introducing the Intel 20A foundry node for mass-production. Not much else is known about "Sound Wave" besides the "Zen 6" CPU cores at this point.

AMD Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" mobile processors continue to roll out in all sorts of review sample guises—mostly within laptops/notebooks and handheld gaming PC segments. An example of the latter would be GPD's Hawk Point-refreshed Win Max 2 model—Cary Golomb, a tech reviewer and self-described evangelist of "PC Gaming Handhelds Since 2016" has acquired this device for benchmark comparison purposes. A Ryzen 7 8840U-powered GPD Win Max 2 model was pitched against similar devices that house older Team Red APU technologies. Golomb's collection included Valve's Steam Deck LCD model, and three "Phoenix" Ryzen 7840U-based GPD models. He did not have any top-of-the-line ASUS or Lenovo handhelds within reach, but the onboard Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU is a close relative of 7840U.

Golomb's social media post included a screenshot of a Batman: Arkham Knight "average frames per second" comparison chart—all devices were running on a low 10 W TDP setting. The overall verdict favors AMD's new Hawk Point part: "Steam Deck low TDP performance finally dethroned...GPD continues to make the best AMD devices. 8840U shouldn't be better, but everywhere I'm testing, it is consistently better across every TDP. TSP measuring similar." Hawk Point appears to be a slight upgrade over Phoenix—most of the generational improvements reside within a more capable XDNA NPU, so it is interesting to see that the 8840U outperforms its predecessor. They both sport AMD's Radeon 780M integrated graphics solution (RDNA 3), while the standard/first iteration Steam Deck makes do with an RDNA 2-era "Van Gogh" iGPU. Golomb found that the: "three other GPD 7840U devices behaved somewhat consistently."

AMD's small but fledgling Ryzen 8000 line of Socket AM5 desktop APUs is about to grow, with the addition of four new low-power SKUs, under the Ryzen 8000GE line. These chips come with a TDP of 35 W compared to the 65 W of the regular 8000G APUs, and a lowered PPT (package power tracking) value, making them energy-efficient variants. To be clear, these are not AMD's 8000-series APUs meant for the commercial desktop market, for that the company has the Ryzen PRO 8000 series and Ryzen PRO 7000 series.

The Ryzen 8000GE series are meant to square off against Intel's 14th Gen Core T-series SKUs that have processor base power values of 35 W, and significantly lower maximum turbo power values than the regular processor models. To carve out these chips, AMD has lowered the clock speeds and TDP compared to the regular 8000G series. Since the underlying 4 nm "Hawk Point" silicon achieves fairly good clocks in its 35 W HS-segment notebook processors, one can expect reasonably good boost residency with the 8000GE desktop chips.

AMD's newly announced Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" desktop APUs do not support ECC memory, contrary to what the specifications on the AMD website had initially shown, Reddit users found out. The company has since quietly edited its product pages to remove the bit about ECC support. For the overwhelming majority of desktop client use cases, including enthusiast PCs, ECC memory support is irrelevant. That said, the memory controllers of "Phoenix" in Ryzen PRO 7000 mobile processors for commercial notebooks support ECC memory, and so it stands to reason that upcoming Ryzen PRO models for both commercial desktops and notebooks might feature it.

The AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G are based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" monolithic silicon, with a more overclocker-friendly set of DDR5 memory controllers than the ones found in the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" processors. Besides support for several high-frequency DDR5 modes, the memory controller technically supports ECC (at least "Phoenix" does, on the Ryzen PRO 7000 mobile processors). The memory controller also supports a maximum of 256 GB of memory, or 64 GB dual-rank memory modules per slot. It also supports 24 GB and 48 GB DIMM densities.

SafeDisk (AKA SoonHo Jeong) has tinkered with an AMD Ryzen 7 8700G APU and ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E GENE motherboard combination—earlier today, the professional overclocker set a validated/verified memory speed of DDR5-10600 world record on Team Red's AM5 platform. This has surpassed a previous result global-leading from late last week—DDR5-10346 was achieved with the same processor, but on a GIGABYTE B650E AORUS Tachyon board. SafeDisk has a distinct advantage in memory overclocking stakes, due to his workplace being the ASUS ROG labs in Taipei, Taiwan—his closest competitor, Benny Lodewijk Nitolo Lase (an Indonesian overclocker) now sits behind him in second place.

SafeDisk's test setup included the aforementioned APU plus motherboard combo, a Thermalright (not ASUS!) AIO, a twin pack of G.Skill Trident Z5 (F5-7800J3646H16G) DIMMs, and an ASUS GeForce GT 730 2 GB Silent graphics card. The ROG Crosshair X670E GENE's default set of VRM heatsinks were removed completely during test conditions. The two memory sticks were set at their default CL36 7800 MT/s speed at 1.45 V—SafeDisk's record breaking DDR5-10600 overclock was achieved with timings of 50-62-62-127-127. Wccftech noted that the: "overclock was able to boot directly into the OS and (SafeDisk) says that the whole OC procedure was very easy."

Tianbo has prepared a very an intriguing Cyberpunk 2077-themed Mini PC for the Chinese gaming hardware market—the JD.com listing (as reported by VideoCardz) showcases black and white enclosures with a sci-fi aesthetic and plenty of RGB lighting courtesy of the slimline internal cooling solution's illuminated 9 cm fan. It is not immediately clear whether CD Projekt and R. Talsorian Games have jointly approved the GOD88 Mini PC's prominent usage of their Cyberpunk title/logo/font. The specification sheet and accompanying imagery place emphasis on the Cyber GOD88's APU of choice: an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mobile processor—this sits at second place within Team Red's recently launched 8040 "Hawk Point" series, their Ryzen 9 8945HS chip takes principal position here.

The GOD88's Ryzen 7 8845HS APU is no slouch when compared to the Ryzen 9 sibling—it runs the same 8-core/16-thread configuration, with a 5.1 GHz max boost (only trailing behind by 100 MHz). The spec sheet mentions a configurable TDP of 35 - 54 W. Tianbo's Mini PC is sold as a barebones system, according to the JD.com product page—customers are expected to plug in their own choice of RAM and storage. Dual-channel DDR5-5600 memory is supported, while the cramped interior can accommodate a single full-sized M.2 2280 PCIe 4×4 SSD. The Tianbo GOD88 "High Performance" Cyberpunk Mini PC will be open to pre-orders (via JD.com) on February 5—barebones pricing is set at 2688 RMB (~$378.50).

Skin temperature-aware power management (STAPM), is a 2014 feature introduced by AMD for its mobile processors that gets the on-die power management logic to take into account not just the processor's own temperatures (measured via on-chip thermal diodes); but also the physical surface temperature of the laptop itself, by reading off temperature probes mounted on the laptop chassis. This ensures that laptops don't get uncomfortably hot for the user, and the processor could do its bit to bring temperatures down. Every desktop APU released by AMD since 2014 has been a case of mobile processor silicon being adapted for the desktop platform by simply disabling certain I/O interfaces and features irrelevant to desktops, such as battery management GPIO, LPDDR memory interfaces, image processing, sensor suite, etc. One such feature is STAPM.

Gamers Nexus discovered that when creating the Ryzen 8000G desktop APUs, AMD forgot to properly disable STAPM, and this has been impacting the processor's CPU and iGPU boosting behavior under heavy load, where temperature-triggered clock speed throttling is engaged undesirably. AMD confirmed the Gamers Nexus discovery, and stated that it can be fixed through a motherboard UEFI firmware (BIOS) update; and that it will work with its desktop motherboard partners to get these out. The highest performance delta observed by GN between an 8000G processor with STAPM and one with its STAPM disabled (probably using an AMD CBS setting); is 16%; and so those with 8000G processors may want to look out for firmware updates from their motherboard vendors.

We already know about AMD Ryzen 7 8700G APU's enjoyment of overclocked memory—early reviews demonstrated the graphical benefits granted by fiddling with "iGPU engine clock and the processor's memory frequency." While gamers can enjoy a boosted integrated graphics solution that is comparable in performance 1080p stakes to a discrete Radeon RX 6500 XT GPU, AI enthusiasts are eager to experiment with the "Hawk Point" pat's Radeon 780M IGP and Neural Processing Unit (NPU)—the first generation Ryzen XDNA inference engine can unleash up to 16 AI TOPs. One individual, chi11eddog, posted their findings through social media channels earlier today, coinciding with the official launch of Ryzen 8000G processors. The initial set of results concentrated on the Radeon 780M aspect; NPU-centric data may arrive at a later date.

They performed quick tests on AMD's freshly released Ryzen 7 8700G desktop processor, combined with an MSI B650 Gaming Plus WiFi motherboard and two sticks of 16 GB DDR5-4800 memory. The MSI exclusive "Memory Try It" feature was deployed further up in the tables—this assisted in achieving and gauging several "higher system RAM frequency" settings. Here is chi11eddog's succinct interpretation of benchmark results: "7600 MT/s is 15% faster than 4800 MT/s in UL Procyon AI Inference Benchmark and 4% faster in GIMP with Stable Diffusion." The processor's default memory state is capable of producing 210 Float32 TOPs, according to chi11eddog's inference chart. The 6000 MT/s setting produces a 7% improvement over baseline, while 7200 MT/s drives proceedings to 11%—the flagship APU's Radeon 780M iGPU appears to be quite dependent on bandwidth. Their GIMP w/ Stable Diffusion benchmarks also taxed the integrated RDNA 3 graphics solution—again, it was deemed to be fairly bandwidth hungry.

The first CPU-Z test results of AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 8700G were sniffed out by serial leaker @momomo_us on X/Twitter and the new APU is looking very promising performance wise. It ends up being neck and neck with yours truly own Ryzen 7 7800X3D with a small lead to the CPU over the APU in single-threaded performance, but in the multi-threaded test the APU manages to stay ahead of the CPU, if only just. Both AMD chips are still somewhat behind Intel's Core i7-12700KF, but it has an extra four threads, even though those threads are slower due to them being on the E-cores.

The Ryzen 7 8700G test system was using an ASRock B650 Pro RS motherboard and the APU was paired with 32 GB of DDR5-6400 memory with reasonably tight timings of 32-39-39-102. The tester relied on the integrated Radeon 780M graphics in the APU and the Windows 11 operating system was installed on a 500 GB Seagate BarraCuda 510 SSD. In the single-threaded test the Ryzen 7 8700G scores 675 points vs 683 for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and in the multi-threaded tests it came in at 7318 vs 7301. Not bad for a 65 W TDP APU vs a 120 W TDP CPU. For comparison, the average for Intel's Core i7-12700KF is 7754 in the mutli-threaded test. Although CPU-Z is far from an exhaustive test, it does at least give us a first glimpse of what to expect from the new Zen 4 APUs from AMD in terms of performance and it looks like it's in line with its best Zen 4 CPUs.

MINISFORUM has recently unveiled a new high-performance Mini PC, the HX100G, now available in their official store. This compact system boasts the powerful combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS flagship processor and Radeon RX 6650M graphics card, making it an ideal choice for gamers, designers, and creative professionals. The sale price for the barebone version is set at $719, the 32 GB RAM+1 TB SSD version is set at $905, and the 64 GB RAM + 1 TB SSD version is priced at $995. As an iterative upgrade to the HX99G, the HX100G features an enhanced CPU in the form of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS. Manufactured using a 4 nm process, this processor boasts 8 cores, 16 threads, a base frequency of 3.8 GHz, and a maximum boost clock of 5.1 GHz. With a TDP ranging from 35 W to 54 W and a generous 16 MB of L3 cache, it also integrates the Radeon 780M integrated GPU, utilizing the FP8 slot. Compared to the 6900HX, the HX100G demonstrates an 8% improvement in single-core performance and a 16% improvement in multi-core performance.

The HX100G is equipped with the AMD Radeon RX 6650M dedicated graphics card (GDDR6 8 GB), supporting AMD Smart Access Memory technology. With a TDP of up to 100 watts, it meets the demands of 1080p high-quality AAA gaming and excels in professional photo editing, 4K video editing, and complex 3D rendering tasks. One of the notable advantages of the HX100G is its robust expandability. Featuring two DDR5 memory slots, it supports a maximum of 64 GB dual-channel memory, with DDR5 clocked at 5600 MHz—an impressive 47% increase over the HX99G's 4800 MHz. In addition to the default M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD slot (supporting up to 2 TB), an extra M.2 2280 SSD slot is provided, supporting NGFF SATA or NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs for further expansion.

Everest (@Olrak29_) has kept track of many AMD processor families over the past couple of years—his latest insight provides an early look at the alleged internal makeup of Team Red's "Kraken Point" APU series. The rumor mill has designated these next-gen mobile processors as 2025 follow-ups to the recently launched Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" family of mainstream laptop APUs. The tipster's initial social media post only mentioned the presence of both Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores within Kraken Point processors, but he later clarified that a total of eight cores would include four large units and four smaller types. TPU's past coverage of Kraken Point pointed to rumors of an 8-core, 16-thread configuration, but leaked slides (from late 2023) did not mention the integration of efficiency-tuned Zen 5c "Prometheus" cores, along with presumed Zen 5 "Nirvana" cores.

Everest's continuous flow of insider information reveals that "Kraken Point" shares many "Hawk Point" traits—four workgroup processors (WGP) could be present on final retail products, granting eight compute units (8 CUs in total). He responded to a query regarding AMD's choice of integrated graphics technology—the succinct answer being RDNA 3.5. Past leaks allege that XDNA 2 will drive the NPU side of things—offering a performance range of around 45 to 50 TOPS. The Kraken Point APU is believed to be sticking with a safe monolithic die design, manufactured on a non-specific 4 nm process. Team Red is rumored to be in TSMC's order books for all sorts of next generation silicon.

AMD announced its Ryzen 8000G series of Zen 4-based desktop APUs earlier this month, with an official product launch date: January 31. The top models within this range are the "Hawk Point" Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G processors—Olrak29_ took to social media after spotting pre-release examples popping up on the Geekbench Browser database. It is highly likely that evaluation samples are in the hands of reviewers, and more benchmarked results are expected to be uploaded over the next week and a half. The Ryzen 7 8700G (w/ Radeon 780M Graphics) was benched on an ASUS ROG STRIX B650-A GAMING WIFI board with 32 GB (6398 MT/s) of DDR5 system memory. Leaked figures appeared online last weekend, originating from an Ryzen 5 8600G (w/ Radeon 760M Graphics) paired with an MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI (MS-7E26) motherboard and 32 GB (6400 MT/s) of DDR5 RAM.

The Geekbench 6 results reveal that the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G APUs are slightly less performant than "Raphael" Ryzen 7000 non-X processors—not a massive revelation, given the underlying technological similarities between these AMD product lines. Evaluations could change with the publication of official review data, but the 8000G series is at a natural disadvantage here—lower core clock frequencies and smaller L3 cache designations are the likely culprits. The incoming APUs are also somewhat hobbled with PCIe support only reaching 4.0 standards. VideoCardz, Tom's Hardware and Wccftech have taken the time to compile the leaked Geekbench 6 results into handy comparison charts—very much worth checking out.

References to GFX1150 & GFX1151 targets have been spotted again—this time in a ROCm Github repository—by renowned hardware sleuth; Kepler_L2. These references were first spotted last summer, in an AMDGPU LLVM backend/compiler (reported by Phoronix)—industry experts immediately linked these target codes to next generation "Strix" APU families. The latest leak provides confirmation that the GFX1150 ID is tied to "Strix Point 1," while GFX1151 is an internal IP for "Strix Point Halo," or simply "Strix Halo." The freshly published ROCm Github's commit is titled: "Strix Halo Support and Strix support in staging," which corroborates previous rumors regarding Team Red's engineers being deep into development of Zen 5 (and RDNA 3.5)-based accelerated processing units.

AMD has published several processor product roadmaps with references to "Strix Point" next-gen APUs, with a targeted 2024 launch window. Their December 2023 "Advancing AI Event" confirmed that the "Strix Point" mobile family will sport "XDNA 2" NPUs—previous generation "Phoenix" and recently released "Hawk Point" processors are on the first iteration of XDNA (a spatial dataflow NPU architecture). It is speculated that a typical "Strix Point" laptop processor will pack 12 Zen 5 CPU cores and 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores. Team Red has kept quiet about "Strix Halo" (also known as "Sarlak") when conducting public-facing presentations—a loose 2025 launch window is being touted by the rumor mill. The most advanced examples could feature up to 16 Zen 5 CPU cores and 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores.

AMD has revealed the full specs of its upcoming Ryzen 8000G APUs and it turns out that the Zen 4c cores aren't clocking as high as the Zen 4 cores in the Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G. We should point out that the 8300G has a singular Zen 4 core and three Zen 4c Cores here, so there's no confusion. The Zen 4 cores in the 8500G have a base clock of 4.1 GHz, while the 8300G comes in at 4.0 GHz, with both of the APU's Zen 4c cores having a base clock of 3.2 GHz. Oddly enough, AMD lists the overall base clock of the 8500G as 3.5 GHz and the 8300G as 3.4 GHz with a notice that reads "Represents the average effective base frequency of all cores." AMD is in other words averaging the clock speeds of the two different cores to come up with an approximate base clock.

The Zen 4 cores in the 8500G boost up to 5 GHz, with the 8300G boosting to 4.9 GHz, whereas the Zen 4c cores in the 8500G boost up to 3.7 GHz and in the 8300G to 3.6 GHz. Here AMD doesn't provide an estimated frequency equivalent. Despite being budget models in the Ryzen 8000G-series of APUs, both SKUs get two USB4 ports with full 40 Gbps capabilities, plus a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports. Furthermore the Radeon 740M GPU will be clocked at 2.8 GHz in both APUs, but both SKUs are limited to a mere four graphics cores, whereas the Ryzen 5 8600G gets eight at the same clock speed and the Ryzen 7 8700G gets 12 at 2.9 GHz. All four APUs also support DisplayPort 2.1.

GPD has disclosed to ITHome that a specification refresh of its Win Max 2 handheld/mini-laptop gaming PC is incoming—this model debuted last year with Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APUs sitting in the driver's seat. A company representative provided a sneak peek of an upgraded device that sports a Team Red Ryzen 8040 series "Hawk Point" mobile processor, and a larger pool of system memory (32 GB versus the 2023 model's 16 GB). The refreshed GPD Win Max 2's Ryzen 7 8840U APU was compared to the predecessor's Ryzen 7 7840U in CPU-Z benchmarks (standard and AX-512)—the results demonstrate a very slight difference in performance between generations.

The 8040 and 7040 APUs share the same "Phoenix" basic CPU design (8-cores + 16-threads) based on the prevalent "Zen 4" microarchitecture, plus an integration of AMD's Radeon 780M GPU. The former's main upgrade lies in its AI-crunching capabilities—a deployment of Team Red's XDNA AI engine. Ryzen 8040's: "NPU performance has been increased to 16 TOPS, compared to 10 TOPS of the NPU on the 'Phoenix' silicon. AMD is taking a whole-of-silicon approach to AI acceleration, which includes not just the NPU, but also the 'Zen 4' CPU cores that support the AVX-512 VNNI instruction set that's relevant to AI; and the iGPU based on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture, with each of its compute unit featuring two AI accelerators, components that make the SIMD cores crunch matrix math. The whole-of-silicon performance figures for "Phoenix" is 33 TOPS; while 'Hawk Point' boasts of 39 TOPS. In benchmarks by AMD, 'Hawk Point' is shown delivering a 40% improvement in vision models, and Llama 2, over the Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" series."

At CES, AMD didn't give away too many technical details of its upcoming Ryzen 8000G-series APUs, but details are starting to trickle out and it's not all good news. As has been known for some time, AMD is using two different chips to make the Ryzen 8000G APUs and they're known as the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2, where the Phoenix 2 parts feature Zen 4c cores, which are not present in the Phoenix 1 APUs. This in and of itself shouldn't be a huge issue, although the Zen 4c CPU cores can be slightly slower in some tasks based on testing of AMD's EPYC server parts.

However, PCGamesN noticed that Gigabyte has posted the full specs for the B650E Aorus Elite X AX Ice motherboard and it looks like there's a much bigger difference between the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2 based APUs. Namely, the Phoenix 2 APUs have fewer PCIe lanes and as such are limited to two PCIe 4.0 lanes for the secondary NVMe slot. As if this wasn't bad enough, the Phoenix 2 APUs only have four PCIe 4.0 lanes for add-in GPUs, whereas the Phoenix 1 APUs have eight. This is very likely to lead to reduced performance if a higher-end GPU is used with such an APU. Note that this will vary depending on the motherboard design, but many B650/B650E boards feature a similar design with regards to the PCIe lanes coming from the CPU socket. Luckily, it's easy to avoid this issue, as the Ryzen 5 8600G and the Ryzen 7 8700G are both Phoenix 1 designs, whereas the Ryzen 5 8500G is the only Phoenix 2 design available in retail, as the Ryzen 3 8300G is an OEM only part.

During CES, PCWorld had a chat with Donny Woligroski, Technical Marketing Manager at AMD. The new Ryzen 8000G APUs were a large part of what covered in the almost 17 minute long video and PCWorld got some details that weren't covered in the official press materials that AMD released at the launch. The officially supported memory speed listed by AMD is DDR5-5600, which is a step up from the official speed of DDR5-5200 for the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs.

However, we know that the Ryzen 7000-series is more than happy to use faster memory and as before, AMD has an unofficial memory sweet spot and just as with the Ryzen 7000-series, the Ryzen 8000G-series of APUs has a memory sweet spot of DDR5-6000. That said, it's unknown if the Ryzen 8000G-series will support faster memory or will start flaking out above DDR5-6000, like many Ryzen 7000-series CPUs do unless you switch to a 1:2 ratio. Woligroski is also pointing out that dual-channel is a must to get the best performance out of the new APUs, although this shouldn't really surprise anyone. Full video after the break.

The dust has barely settled after MSI's unveiling of their Claw A1M handheld gaming PC at last week's CES event, but discussions have already started regarding a potential successor. The Taiwanese multinational technology company appears keen to jump into an emerging market—Valve, ASUS ROG, Lenovo and a slew of smaller manufacturers have launched handheld gaming devices. The Claw stands out due to its unusual choice of SoC—an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H APU that deploys an 8-core Arc Xe-LPG iGPU—while everyone else has pretty much sided with AMD. IGN cornered Clifford Chun (MSI's System Product Managing Director) at CES 2024, where he was grilled on the topic of potential future iterations including spec upgrades and OLED displays: "So, just like our laptops, our aim for users who use this will be roughly two to three years because game titles demand a lot more every two or three years. So, at least minimum, that kind of stuff. Obviously, if you play retro games, you can play MSI Claw for 10 years."

Chun continued that line of thought: "So, this will be only the first version of our Claw. We are anticipating to come out version 2, version 3, version 4 down the road and it's already in the pipeline." Gaming hardware detectives posit, given the 2-3 year gap between models, that the next version of MSI's handheld gaming device could debut with Intel Panther Lake and Arc Xe 3 "Celestial" internals. When quizzed about future release windows, Chun did not commit to anything firm: "It really depends on, for example, the CPU or a graphic upgrade down the road. So, just keep in mind, and then just check it out. When something like this happens, do a refresh, and then you will anticipate that MSI will come out with something similar."

AMD Socket AM4 continues to be relevant even in 2024, nearly seven years since its introduction, with the company announcing several new processor models at CES. AMD has extended Ryzen 5000 series "Zen 3" support across all three desktop chipset series, including the oldest AMD 300-series, and since all Socket AM4 motherboards feature USB BIOS Flashback, users have the full spread of Socket AM4 processors to upgrade to. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D continues to be a popular final upgrade destination for gamers on Socket AM4 who may have spent a pretty penny building a high-end gaming desktop in 2020-21. The 5800X3D offers gaming performance comparable to an Intel Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake," despite being based on the older "Zen 3" microarchitecture, since it enjoys a large 96 MB L3 cache, thanks to AMD's innovative 3D Vertical Cache technology. The 5800X3D commands a $360 street price, which may be a little steep for some users, and so AMD is increasing choice, with the introduction of the new Ryzen 7 5700X3D.

The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is an 8-core/16-thread Socket AM4 processor, which is practically the same silicon as the 5800X3D, but with lower clock speeds, and more importantly a 30% lower price. While the 5800X3D commands $360 in the market, the new 5700X3D is coming in at an attractive $250. The 5700X3D comes with a base frequency of 3.00 GHz, and maximum boost frequency of 4.10 GHz. In comparison the 5800X3D has a 3.40 GHz base frequency, and 4.50 GHz boost. Both chips enjoy the same power limits, with a TDP of 105 W. The 5700X3D gets the same 96 MB of L3 cache that includes 64 MB of 3D Vertical Cache; and 512 KB of L2 cache per core. The I/O is identical, too, with a 24-lane PCI-Express Gen 4 interface, and dual-channel DDR4 memory, with DDR4-3600 being the sweetspot frequency.Update Jan 9th: AMD clarified the specs of the Ryzen 5 5500GT in an updated slide. It is indeed a 6-core/12-thread processor.

AMD today announced the Ryzen 8000G line of desktop APUs. These come in the Socket AM5 package, and are supported by all motherboards based on the AMD X670/E, B650/E, and A620 chipsets, with some requiring UEFI firmware updates. Since USB BIOS Flashback is standard issue on AMD motherboards, this should be no problem. With Ryzen 7000 series "Raphael" desktop processors that debut the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, AMD had standardized integrated graphics, however, the iGPU for these are just enough for desktop/productivity workloads, offering comparable performance to the iGPUs of Intel 13th Gen Core desktop processors. AMD doesn't consider Ryzen 7000 chips as APUs for this reason. An APU has to be a processor with powerful integrated graphics that can offer entry-level gaming, high-res content consumption, or multi-monitor productivity, and "Raphael" isn't it. Enter the Ryzen 8000G series.

The AMD Ryzen 8000G series debuts four APU models, the Ryzen 7 8700G, the Ryzen 5 8600G, the Ryzen 5 8500G, and the Ryzen 3 8300G. The 8700G and 8600G are based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" silicon, feature Ryzen AI, and are the first desktop processors to feature an NPU (neural processing unit). The 8500G and 8300G are based on the 4 nm "Phoenix 2" silicon. The Ryzen 7 8700G leads the pack, and is a maxed out implementation of "Hawk Point," featuring an 8-core/16-thread CPU based on the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, the full Radeon 780M integrated graphics implementation with 12 RDNA3 compute units; and the Ryzen AI XDNA NPU. The processor has a combined AI throughput of 39 TOPS, with 16 TOPS from the NPU. For reference, an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H "Meteor Lake" mobile processor with its AI Boost NPU, has a combined AI throughput of 34 TOPS.

The AMD Socket AM4 platform is still alive and kicking, with AMD releasing new processor models in its 7th year. Many of these chips started selling online in Europe. The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is a slightly lower clocked version of the 5800X3D, which for many of those still on AM4 is the final upgrade to their platform. The 5800X3D may be based on the older "Zen 3" microarchitecture, but thanks to its 3D Vertical Cache technology, offers gaming performance comparable to the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake," making even 7-year old AM4 gaming desktops contemporary. To cash in on this exact market, AMD released a more cost-effective option, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D.

The 5700X3D is an 8-core/16-thread Socket AM4 processor that features 96 MB of L3 cache thanks to the 3D V-cache technology, just like the 5800X3D, but comes with a maximum boost frequency of 4.10 GHz, compared to the 4.50 GHz of the 5800X3D. Store listings do not mention its TDP or base frequency. The 5700X3D is being listed at 271€ including taxes, or about 15-20% cheaper than the 5800X3D. A word of caution when choosing the 5700X3D would be its close to non-existent overclocking headroom, so this probably isn't a chip that you can manually overclock to performance levels of a 5800X3D while saving some 40€ on the side.

Hot on the heels of yesterday's leak revealing that the Ryzen 5 8600G Socket AM5 desktop APU features a Radeon 760M iGPU with 8 CU, we're getting to know that the top of the line Ryzen 7 8700G comes with the maxed out Radeon 780M. The 8700G is a Socket AM5 APU based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" or "Phoenix" silicon (unclear at this point).

The Ryzen 7 8700G features an 8-core/16-thread CPU based on the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, with a base frequency of 4.20 GHz, and a maximum boost frequency of 5.10 GHz. Each of the 8 CPU cores features a 1 MB L2 cache, and they share a 16 MB L3 cache. The Radeon 780M iGPU features 12 compute units (CU), amounting to 768 stream processors. The iGPU engine clock boosts up to 2.90 GHz. While all Ryzen 7000 desktop processors come with integrated graphics, AMD does not consider them to be APUs—processors with overpowered iGPUs that can be used for entry-level gaming besides high-resolution entertainment.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 5 8600G Socket AM5 desktop APU will feature the truncated Radeon 760M integrated graphics, and not the previously believed Radeon 780M, or the full iGPU configuration present on the silicon. At this point, there are still conflicting reports on which exact silicon the Ryzen 8000G desktop APUs are even based on, with some of the older reports and Geekbench detecting 8600G engineering samples to be based on "Phoenix," and some of the newer reports suggesting that it's based on "Hawk Point." Both "Phoenix" and "Hawk Point" are nearly identical, except for the latter to feature a faster NPU.

The Ryzen 5 8600G is configured with a 6-core/12-thread CPU based on the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, with 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU base frequency is set to a healthy 4.35 GHz, and maximum CPU boost frequency of 5.00 GHz. These CPU clocks are very similar to those of the mobile Ryzen 5 7640H (which has a base frequency of 4.30 GHz, but the same 5.00 GHz boost), but in case of the 8600G, the 65 W TDP and possible 90 W PPT should help with boost frequency residency. The Radeon 760M gets 8 out of 12 RDNA3 compute units physically present on the silicon, giving it 512 stream processors. Geekbench detects an engine clock (GPU clock) of 2.80 GHz, compared to the 2.60 GHz of the Radeon 760M on the Ryzen 5 7640H. The 8600G ES was running on an MSI MEG X670E Ace motherboard, with 32 GB of dual-channel DDR5-6000 memory.