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

[raystriker]

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.

It's coming...

Strix Point Halo will use AMD’s next-gen Zen 5 processor cores, which are expected to be a solid step on from current Zen 4 chips, and the integrated graphics will be RDNA 3+ (also referred to as RDNA 3.5). AMD uses the RDNA 3 architecture for its current-gen GPUs, so RDNA 3.5 is a refresh of this. It’ll also have an XDNA 2-powered NPU for accelerating AI workloads, to boot.

The most powerful Strix Point Halo APU is rumored to have 16-cores and an RDNA 3.5 GPU with 40 Compute Units (CUs).

[varikonniemi]

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.

AMD caught the intel disease. They controlled the market for some time, so now they just revamp same old design until intel releases next gen, so they know what tey need to target with their next gen.

[schmidtbag]

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.

Surely, the Ryzen 7000 series iGPUs are sufficient for what you describe.

[Teggs]

AMD should sample an 8300G to Phoronix even if they aren't available for general sale. People also want to know how well a pre-built system they might purchase would perform. (Not me in this case, but I do wonder how it performs when only one core can boost high.)

[Space Beer]

AMD caught the intel disease. They controlled the market for some time, so now they just revamp same old design until intel releases next gen, so they know what tey need to target with their next gen.

I doubt we know the market better than them. If they released APU with this core config (2C+4c/12t) and larger GPU, eg. ⩾16CU RDNA3, with appropriate design (bus, cache), it would still not gain any significant market share.

[rwinkhart]

Michael, I really appreciate the testing - not many outlets care about this skew.

I am looking to build an extremely low-idle-power home server and I would be very appreciative if you could get me the idle power consumption stats on this CPU.

Could you just run `sudo turbostat --Summary --quiet --show Busy%,Avg_MHz,PkgWatt --interval 1` while idling with this CPU and get me the results? I would be very grateful

Thanks again for the testing!

[JEBjames]

The 8500g is interesting.

At a glance... No AI? Cut down integrated GPU? Lower clock speeds?

Most people don't need AI. Or the fastest clocks. Or the fastest integrated GPU. If you needed any of that...buy something better (and more expensive).

But at the right price...and this should be cheap for AMD to manufacture.

Take lower binned parts. A side order of denser, lower cost to manufacture "c" core goodness. Glue it together. And you end up with, yes, a processor that's not top dog. But stacks up decent in all tests? And in some tests pretty good? And at super low watts?

Yes yes, we know budget six core CPUs aren't top tier enough for the discerning Phoronix reader in 2024.

[bnolsen]

They need to push for igpu with 4c cores only and rx 6700 performance.

[ayumu]

No power consumption measurements?

[Michael]

No power consumption measurements?

Did you read the article? There are... Or if clicking the OB link at the end, power numbers on each and every benchmark.