Desktop Phoenix will be released at the end of January
It looks like we finally have an answer to the question of when AMD will finally release “APUs”, or power-efficient monolithic processors with a beefy integrated GPU for the AM5 platform. It was revealed by Gigabyte, and while that isn’t directly from AMD, Gigabyte should be well informed (although the information likely wasn’t supposed to be shared publicly). The company announced the release date of the APUs in a press release.
Gigabyte has issued a press release highlighting the release of new BIOS (or more precisely UEFI firmware) versions for the X670(E), B650(E) and A620 chipset boards, which we wrote about in one of the previous reports. These AGESA 1.1.0.0-based firmwares are intended to bring support for Phoenix APUs – 4nm monolithic processors derived from the mobile Ryzen 7040. Gigabyte fully confirms this in the press release, stating that they are bringing support for “next-gen APUs” (next-gen only if we are talking about desktop sense, in laptops they are old news). According to other sources, their designation could be Ryzen 8000G (i.e. they will no longer be part of the 7000 series).
According to Gigabyte, these “next-gen APUs” for the AM5 socket will be released in late January 2024 – the first time the date has appeared anywhere. AMD hasn’t officially announced or confirmed this yet, the company will likely do so only when these processors are officially unveiled. That could very well be next year at CES 2024.
However, the company has an event planned for Dec. 6th called Advancing AI, where it will showcase various innovations, especially around its powerful AMD Instinct series AI accelerators. However, it is possible that the opportunity will also be used to present the Ryzen 8000G APUs on this occasion.
November 10, 2023 –GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, released the latest AGESA 1.1.0.0 beta bios for AM5 next gen APU support on X670, B650, A620 motherboards. The forthcoming AM5 next gen APU will be launched at the end of January 2024.
The Gigabyte BIOSes with AGESA 1.1.0.0 for Ryzen 8000G are still in beta phase, which should be true for other board manufacturers as well. The final versions should be released at the end of November, so there will still be some time left before the release of the APUs and maybe more udpates will come out by that time.
Ryzen 8000G
These APUs, apparently under the Ryzen 8000G designation, will provide a maximum of eight Zen 4 cores and an integrated GPU with up to 768 shaders (12 CUs) of RDNA 3 architecture (in the top of the line SKU). The monolithic design should mean very low idle power draw and also low power draw in single-threaded workloads. These processors could also have the Ryzen AI unit enabled.
On the other hand, they won’t support PCIe 5.0 and contain only 16MB of L3 cache. Thus, their gaming performance will be lower than models like the Ryzen 5 7600X or Ryzen 7 7700X (not to mention the X3D models). It’s possible they will achieve slightly lower boost clock speeds.
The cheaper Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 models will apparently be based on the six-core Phoenix 2 hybrid APU, which contains just two large Zen 4 cores and four compact Zen 4c cores that will top out at lower clock speeds, as we wrote about here. These models lack Ryzen AI and their GPU will provide a maximum of 256 shaders (4 CU).
Sources: Gigabyte, VideoCardz (1, 2), AMD
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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