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

Right off the bat with the Ryzen 5 8500G we see its Radeon 740M RDNA3 graphics as being much slower than the 8600G and 8700G, but at least comparable to the prior generation 5600G/5700G APUs. The Ryzen 5 8500G's integrated graphics remained faster than Intel Raptor Lake Refresh and the Ryzen 7000 series with RDNA2 integrated graphics, but not as powerful as the 8600G and 8700G APUs.

On a performance-per-Watt basis, the Ryzen 5 8500G was just behind the 8600G and 8700G for this demanding GravityMark benchmark.

For 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, the Ryzen 5 8500G was delivering similar graphics performance to the Ryzen 5 5600G -- again at least faster still than the Ryzen 7000 series and the current Intel desktop CPUs.

The Ryzen 5 8500G graphics performance is better off than the Intel 14th Gen Core processors and Ryzen 7000 series, but not nearly as interesting as the graphics potential out of the higher-end 8600G and 8700G.