AMD Ryzen 5 8500G: A Surprisingly Fascinating Sub-$200 CPU

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Ryzen 5 8500G: A Surprisingly Fascinating Sub-$200 CPU

After reviewing the Ryzen 7 8700G and the Ryzen 5 8600G as these new Zen 4 processors with RDNA3 integrated graphics, the latest AMD 8000G series CPU in the Linux benchmarking lab at Phoronix is the Ryzen 5 8500G. The Ryzen 5 8500G is a 6-core / 12-thread processor with RDNA3 graphics that retails for just $179 USD. Here's a look at how it's performing against other AMD and Intel processors on Ubuntu Linux. The Ryzen 5 8500G ends up being decent on the GPU side but making me genuinely excited is the Zen 4C prospects in the low-power space for AI workloads at the edge, low power servers, and other different deployments for great low-power performance. Under load this AVX-512 wielding budget desktop processor was typically pulling 50 Watts or less!

https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-5-8500g

[paulocoghi]

The results were better than I imagined. Congratulations, AMD.

[Michael]

cTDP results up next... BIOS doesn't allow disabling just the Zen 4 or 4C cores, but will work on offlining some of them as well for a 4 vs. 4C follow-up article.

[johanb]

Finally a good APU for desktop!
Seems like the efficiency has dropped in GravityMark compared to the 5600G, but not too bad!

[schmidtbag]

Is it just me or does this actually seem rather underwhelming? Much of the point of APUs is having a good iGPU, but it seems the 8500G's is worse than the 5600G's - it's not just overall slower but the performance-per-watt is worse. Makes me feel like there's perhaps a driver issue.

[sophisticles]

The Ryzen 5 8500G ends up being decent on the GPU side but making me genuinely excited is the Zen 4C prospects in the low-power space for AI workloads at the edge, low power servers, and other different deployments for great low-power performance. Under load this AVX-512 wielding budget desktop processor was typically pulling 50 Watts or less!

Another difference with this sub-$200 processor is there is no Ryzen AI support unlike with the 8600G/8700G models.

These two quotes from the article tell you everything you need to know about AMD's intentions with this processor, namely it has none.

The 8500G is using Zen 4C cores for low power consumption with good AVX-512 performance but at the same time it lacks a hardware AI unit, i,e, an NPU, like the more expensive variants.

This tells me that AMD has no interest in attacking the AI market segment with CPUs any longer and they would be stupid to do so.

Michael has an article on AMD acquisition of Xilinx, this company had excellent technology for video encoding, AI, data center applications, they used to use FPGAs a wide range of workloads at very low power consumption.

With AMD's acquisition, they have started to attack markets that will be very receptive to low power, super fast ad-in cards.

What this means is that AMD has no desire to sell sub $200 APU's that are great for AI or similar workloads when they can sell you ad-in cards that cost thousands of dollars and frankly any of us would do the same thing.

These APU's would be ideal if someone would actually develop a game that makes extensive use of AVX-512 to speed up software based AI or if someone created an NLE with AI powered filters that made extensive use of AVX-512.

In these workloads, this APU would be great.

Perhaps if this is a sign of future products from AMD, such as a 12C/24T APU featuring only Zen 4C cores.

More about Xilinx IP:

https://www.xilinx.com/publications/product-briefs/alveo-u50-product-brief-v2.pdf

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2023/04/06/amd-builds-breakthrough-av1-encoder-chip-for-massive-streaming-services/?sh=5bc6ec1511e2

[panikal]

Much of the point of APUs is having a good iGPU

I would add 'for some people' and 'good enough' depending on if the purpose actually requires any graphical usage.. As Michael highlighted, this would make an excellent low power home server, maybe even the silent sort (i have a 5600G thats silent), especially for something like a household plex server or the like where you might want to transcode on the fly and possibly have mulitple I/O streams going but still quiet enough to keep near the TV - and keep on or in sleep mode much of the time and not kill the power usage. It will probably game a little better than the 5600G did - which did well enough even at 1080p for the older games I tried on it.

Anyway AMD drivers mature with age (normally) and this is still early days for a low power APU with mixed cores like this. Its a great showing for launch benchmarks.

[raystriker]

These two quotes from the article tell you everything you need to know about AMD's intentions with this processor, namely it has none.

The 8500G is using Zen 4C cores for low power consumption with good AVX-512 performance but at the same time it lacks a hardware AI unit, i,e, an NPU, like the more expensive variants.

This tells me that AMD has no interest in attacking the AI market segment with CPUs any longer and they would be stupid to do so.

Michael has an article on AMD acquisition of Xilinx, this company had excellent technology for video encoding, AI, data center applications, they used to use FPGAs a wide range of workloads at very low power consumption.

With AMD's acquisition, they have started to attack markets that will be very receptive to low power, super fast ad-in cars.

What this means is that AMD has no desire to sell sub $200 APU's that are great for AI or similar workloads when they can sell you ad-in cards that cost thousands of dollars and frankly any of us would do the same thing.

These APU's would be ideal if someone would actually develop a game that makes extensive use of AVX-512 to speed up software based AI or if someone created an NLE with AI powered filters that made extensive use of AVX-512.

In these workloads, this APU would be great.

Perhaps if this is a sign of future products from AMD, such as a 12C/24T APU featuring only Zen 4C cores.

More about Xilinx IP:

https://www.xilinx.com/publications/product-briefs/alveo-u50-product-brief-v2.pdf

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2023/04/06/amd-builds-breakthrough-av1-encoder-chip-for-massive-streaming-services/?sh=5bc6ec1511e2

You missed AMD's intention. This is an extremely cheap APU for pre-built PCs for office applications and micro-PCs. It sips power, has more than enough graphics oomph and as a bonus you get AVX512 (could be used for proof of concepts etc).

Better Ryzen AI is coming in bigger APUs(+NPU) later this year/early next year which will 4-5x the TOPs perf of the 8700G's NPU. Any serious dev will be willing to pay 2-3-4x of the 8500G's MSRP to get a much more powerful CPU+GPU+NPU.

[and.elf]

For igpu gaming - which is where it should be used, this just seems like a much more expensive, but alot more future-proof, 5600g.

[Brane215]

AMD is sleeping on APU front.
Same-old, same-old. I understand that GPU iterations take time, but for APU they could have used puzzle piece that they already have : 3D Vcache.
On both ends - CPU and iGPU units.
And MCRDIMM registers that are to come out for server tech - to effectively double the bandwidth by doubling the chips on the bus.
So with MCR-ed LPDDDR5 one could get to GDDR6 bandwidth.
Onboard extra L3 on both sides would free RAM bandwitfh (and latency) etc. And lower the average power use, thus allowing one to get more GPU compute units on board within the same (why not higher ?) TDP.

Such an APU with 32CU units at 170W TDP would bring some serious punch.