AMD Ryzen 5 8500G

[Dr. Dro]

I doubt too many people would be rocking PCIe 2.0 cards these days. I have one from Maxwell(?) days but not using it or did you mean 2x lanes?

And you will also not use insane settings to max out the cards capabilities, goes both ways ain't it?

This still doesn't address games that don't even function correctly when link bandwidth or memory capacity is starved (such as Forspoken). If it was Intel that was trying to sell a processor that had only a x4 link. I guarantee the tone of "it's not so bad" wouldn't be the one trying to be pushed here.

If there was one review I agreed when W1zz didn't give it any award, was this one. It just blows at $160.

 

[Nostras]

This chip will never be a slam dunk unless it costs $50, not with these limitations. It's baffling. The iGPU is Vega levels of suck, the x4 link is a nightmare for any sort of dGPU including at the low end, and non-G regular processors now include basic graphics. At $160, I cannot look the other way for anything here.

I checked the prices. A 8500G + 32GB 6000MHz kit and cheapest AM5 board will set me back 330 euros, an 12100 kit with 3200MHz 16GB memory will set me back about 210 euros.
Although the things you get are nice (better productivity, better single core perf, upgradeable platform, 32GB vs 16GB, somewhat usable iGPU) it's not worth the extra >100 euros.

If the total price of the 8500G setup dips below 280 euros or so there's a serious case to make for the aforementioned upgrades for the price.

As I'm typing this I see your comment about the 160$. Surprisingly the 8500G is 145 euros over here, which is a lot more reasonable. Probably explains our differing viewpoints on it tbh (that's about 130 USD).

I doubt too many people would be rocking PCIe 2.0 cards these days. I have one from Maxwell(?) days but not using it or did you mean 2x lanes?

And you will also not use insane settings to max out the cards capabilities, goes both ways ain't it?

Actually no. Some usecases are a bit questionable, but most of HUB's testing targeted 60 - 120fps with their 16GB card. We can argue if maximum preset and/or raytracing is a reasonable expectation on a 4060TI, but the fact remains that the 16GB on 3.0 x8 can churn out more than enough frames whereas the 8GB 3.0 x8 card is in serious shit. Having a compromised setup now in certain conditions only indicated this problem will get worse over time.

 

[R0H1T]

This still doesn't address games that don't even function correctly when link bandwidth or memory capacity is starved (such as Forspoken).

The issue with that assumption is people would be willing to buy this just to pair with a good GPU, I'd wager the vast major will run with just the IGP. If you're buying this for serious gaming just stay away. We had the same issue with 5700G & PCIe 3.0 lanes as well.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I checked the prices. A 8500G + 32GB 6000MHz kit and cheapest AM5 board will set me back 330 euros, an 12100 kit with 3200MHz 16GB memory will set me back about 210 euros.
Although the things you get are nice (better productivity, better single core perf, upgradeable platform, 32GB vs 16GB, somewhat usable iGPU) it's not worth the extra >100 euros.

If the total price of the 8500G setup dips below 280 euros or so there's a serious case to make for the aforementioned upgrades for the price.

As I'm typing this I see your comment about the 160$. Surprisingly the 8500G is 145 euros over here, which is a lot more reasonable. Probably explains our differing viewpoints on it tbh (that's about 130 USD).


Actually no. Some usecases are a bit questionable, but most of HUB's testing targeted 60 - 120fps with their 16GB card. We can argue if maximum preset and/or raytracing is a reasonable expectation on a 4060TI, but the fact remains that the 16GB can churn out more than enough frames whereas the 8GB card is in serious shit. Having a compromised setup now in certain conditions only indicated this problem will get worse over time.

Cheap DDR5 is slowly becoming available, you don't need to stick to DDR4 on a budget anymore. My primary problem with this chip is the price. If they had put the Radeon 780M iGPU (that's actually pretty good), $160 would still be pricy but at least it'd be justifiable... with this one? No.

145 is actually a step in the right direction, but I still wouldn't be happy until it's 99.99€.

The issue with that assumption is people would be willing to buy this just to pair with a good GPU, I'd wager the vast major will run with just the IGP. If you're buying this for serious gaming just stay away. We had the same issue with 5700G & PCIe 3.0 lanes as well.

5700G supports 3.0 x8 link off which you can run practically any GPU (except maybe the 4090) decently, though.

 

[Nostras]

Cheap DDR5 is slowly becoming available, you don't need to stick to DDR4 on a budget anymore. My primary problem with this chip is the price. If they had put the Radeon 780M iGPU (that's actually pretty good), $160 would still be pricy but at least it'd be justifiable... with this one? No.

145 is actually a step in the right direction, but I still wouldn't be happy until it's 99.99€.



5700G supports 3.0 x8 link off which you can run practically any GPU (except maybe the 4090) decently, though.

You are aware the 8500G and 5700G effectively support the same link speed for the GPU right?

 

[R0H1T]

5700G supports 3.0 x8 link off which you can run practically any GPU (except maybe the 4090) decently, though.

There was a major stink up about normal zen3 chips having PCIe 4.0 x16 & then 5700G being restricted to a quarter(half?) of that.

The latest zen5 in comparison ~

 

[Vincero]

5700G supports 3.0 x8 link off which you can run practically any GPU (except maybe the 4090) decently, though.

No, the 5700G has a full x16 (gen 3) lanes.

 

[Dr. Dro]

You are aware the 8500G and 5700G effectively support the same link speed for the GPU right?

Provided you have also set aside the budget to purchase a Gen 4 GPU to use with it, otherwise, bandwidth is halved. Budget builds tend to carry over the GPU (an expensive component), and many people will still try to run these with cards from the GTX 10/16, RTX 20 or the RX 400/500 series.

No, the 5700G has a full x16 (gen 3) lanes.

To be precise, 5700X (Vermeer) has 24 Gen 4 lanes and 5700G (Cezanne) has 20 Gen 3 lanes. However, the reduction in lanes + motherboards who use resources will rarely allow for x16 operation for graphics. My laptop's 5600H (Cezanne as well) is configured to have the GPU at a x8 link, then another x8 lanes are reserved for storage and the rest is used by integrated peripherals such as the NIC.

 

[ymdhis]

The review could've used a comparison with at least the 8600G, so we know how it compares against the bigger Phoenix APU, especially for the IGPU.

 

[R0H1T]

You can check other reviews from about 5-6 months back.

 

[Chrispy_]

Presumably this is AMD testing the waters with Zen4C for consumer appeal in a jack-of-all-trades APU that will work in budget desktops, thin clients, budget laptops, NAS boxes, etc.

I can't help but feel that 4CU is still too weak to be worth bothering with, which is a shame because of the miserable four-lanes for a dGPU, worsened still by budget chipsets like the A620 being stuck at PCIe Gen 3, too. I was really hoping for at least 6CU in this variant as that would be enough to deliver 1080p30 in a lot of the games on the market during the sales window of this 8500G.

At 4CU it's too weak which means it's relegated to much older games or emulation, something the 2CU basic IGP can manage just fine.

Still, this is hopefully going to be a popular low-cost chip with low power consumption for tiny little NUC-like units and with a bit of luck we can finally say goodbye to Zen2+Vega rubbish that's still propping up the entry level in AMD's portfolio!

 

[Vincero]

To be precise, 5700X (Vermeer) has 24 Gen 4 lanes and 5700G (Cezanne) has 20 Gen 3 lanes. However, the reduction in lanes + motherboards who use resources will rarely allow for x16 operation for graphics. My laptop's 5600H (Cezanne as well) is configured to have the GPU at a x8 link, then another x8 lanes are reserved for storage and the rest is used by integrated peripherals such as the NIC.

So your laptop basically doesn't use a chipset chip and just hangs everything off the CPU PCIe connections?
That seems more a unique choice by them vs being common to save PCB space - X300 chipset style (which I guess isn't needed as SATA and USB can all come from CPU connections)... I've got a full ATX B550 board with 5700G that I used for media / server stuff and there is no issue with having all 16 lanes for main PCIe slot - even the budget 5600G build I made for the Mrs a while ago with an A520 chipset has no issues with the 5000G range, indeed the specs it gives are:

• Supports x16 speed with Ryzen™ 5000, 5000G, 4000G and 3000 processors
• Supports x8 speed with Ryzen™ 3000G processors
• Supports x4 speed with AMD® Athlon™ with Radeon Graphics processors

For sure the older Zen APUs were limited, and yes, Cezanne and Renoir both have less lanes than the IO die AM4 parts have, but I think 'most' motherboards would be wired for x16 on the 5000G series.

 

[Dr. Dro]

So your laptop basically doesn't use a chipset chip and just hangs everything off the CPU PCIe connections?
That seems more a unique choice by them vs being common to save PCB space (which I guess isn't needed as SATA and USB can all come from CPU connections)... I've got a full ATX B550 board with 5700G that I used for media / server stuff and there is no issue with having all 16 lanes for main PCIe slot - even the budget 5600G build I made for the Mrs a while ago with an A520 chipset has no issues with the 5000G range, indeed the specs it gives are:

• Supports x16 speed with Ryzen™ 5000, 5000G, 4000G and 3000 processors
• Supports x8 speed with Ryzen™ 3000G processors
• Supports x4 speed with AMD® Athlon™ with Radeon Graphics processors

For sure the older Zen APUs were limited, and yes, Cezanne and Renoir both have less lanes than the IO die AM4 parts have, but I think 'most' motherboards would be wired for x16 on the 5000G series.

Probably, I don't think any laptops have an actual chipset. But it's good to know, 3.0 x16 would only widen the gap between this and its direct predecessor. Which is even more awful.

 

[Player]

Thank you for the review @W1zzard !

It seems to be a nice efficient chip let down by that PCIe 4.0 x4 link for the primary PCIe slot from a technical point of view, but mostly by the price, since as I see it, this cpu shouldn't be purchased if one intends to use a dedicated graphics card for gaming.

As an aside, the relative performance for gaming at 3840x2160 bar graph image has the Core i9-13900K as the base 100%, instead of the actual cpu that is being reviewed, the Ryzen 5 8500G.

 

[Wirko]

Thank you for bringing back idle power measurements. Given the choice between CPU-only and whole system measurements, I'd first choose "both", but system would be my next pick.

It's a bit maddening that every review site which covers system idle power consumption reports wildly different results, both in absolute numbers and relative rankings. Compare TPU with Computerbase idle measurements for example, or Guru3D's measurements.

The rest of the system contributes a large and unpredictable amount of power draw, for example the 4090 FE alone consumes 29 W on idle with two monitors, measured on the 12 V line. That's probably 33-35 W at the wall socket.

I still miss Hexus.net and their CPU reviews, they often achieved very low idle consumption. This part must have been part of the reason I chose an i5-6600K + Z170. I get 40-45 W when idle, that's with IGPU, it's not what Hexus promised but still very nice.

@W1zzard , could you please consider adding 12V idle power to your reviews? It certainly isn't negligible in AMD CPUs with chiplets, nor in overclocked CPUs of any colour.

 

[Vincero]

Is this the same chip?

AMD Ryzen Z1 Specs

Phoenix2, 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.2 GHz, 15 W

www.techpowerup.com

Probably explains the pricing since it's also in high demand for consoles!

More or less yep the same. Obviously with the tap opened up fully in terms of thermal headroom.
It's not that the product itself is bad... I remember AMD E-350 net-tops and ultra portables, which occupied a similar envelope in terms of power/TDP that were a long way off in terms of core performance from the desktop alternatives (and even then they were better than a lot of the Intel Atom options) - at least these Ryzen 8500G's actually are capable of performing more like a current generation desktop CPU but it's very compromised for the desktop. I can't see this being used on anything bigger than an ITX/mATX board, but even then it's still not a compelling choice with the price and the choices available.

I think they should have just made the 8500G from the same die as the 8600/8700 with whatever restrictions might have been needed to salvage silicon where possible. The other two pheonix2 offerings should have been OEM only - probably call them 8300G and 8400G.
At least then the retail parts would have had feature parity, and maybe even then the 8500G would also have an NPU... only the OEM Pheonix2 parts would be the cut down stuff nobody wants.

 

[mechtech]

There are a trillion better HTPC chips in the market, including, if not particularly from, AMD.

Can you list all trillion for me please?

 

[catulitechup]

Very good review but as other said 8600g/8700g review is also interesting

Almost forget if you can add 5600g to 8500g review for compare will be usefull

Thanks

 

[Dr. Dro]

Can you list all trillion for me please?

5700G/subvariants (Cezanne)
11th+ gen Core i5/i3 with graphics
Matisse and Vermeer processors with an RX 6400 or GTX 1650
Xeons from AliExpress
Probably a R5 3400G as well as long as the price is right
Any old optiplex with the cheapest gpu you can find (now that's an idea, especially considering $160)

 

[sLowEnd]

5700G/subvariants (Cezanne)
11th+ gen Core i5/i3 with graphics
Matisse and Vermeer processors with an RX 6400 or GTX 1650
Xeons from AliExpress
Probably a R5 3400G as well as long as the price is right
Any old optiplex with the cheapest gpu you can find (now that's an idea, especially considering $160)

Most of those options aren't very forward looking, with a lack of AV1 decode support

Something like a low end 12th gen chip would probably be better for an HTPC.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Most of those options aren't very forward looking, with a lack of AV1 decode support

Something like a low end 12th gen chip would probably be better for an HTPC.

Cezanne's Vega graphics are quite dated, but but AV1 now decodes fast enough on any SSSE3 CPU (1080p) and most recent quad-cores should handle 4K
11th-14th Gen UHD Graphics have AV1 decode capabilities.
NVIDIA RTX 30-series GPUs and newer have AV1 decode capabilities, 3050 6GB works on slot power and has full support for HTPC/video workloads, despite bad value for gaming
Always More Disappointments, Navi 24 has very limited video decoding capabilities, AV1 is not compatible, however, software decoding is still viable
Broadwell-EP halo 22-core/44-thread Xeon 2699 v4 is still $15 cheaper than this processor on AliExpress, with this much CPU performance you'll be encoding AV1 with it. Chinese X99 motherboards are extremely inexpensive in comparison to even A620 motherboards
Complete Skylake-era Optiplexes can be found in the $80-100 range on eBay, MercadoLibre, OLX, etc.

I rest my case, $160 is just rotten for this CPU, just, really rotten. Even with the potential argument that you can upgrade to a Raphael or Granite Ridge CPU down the line, it's still $160 for a chip that's... gonna be effectively discarded? No matter how I look at it I can't see this being a justifiable price for this particular product

 

[W1zzard]

As an aside, the relative performance for gaming at 3840x2160 bar graph image has the Core i9-13900K as the base 100%, instead of the actual cpu that is being reviewed, the Ryzen 5 8500G.

Fixed

@W1zzard , could you please consider adding 12V idle power to your reviews? It certainly isn't negligible in AMD CPUs with chiplets, nor in overclocked CPUs of any colour.

It's pretty much 0 W on most processors

 

[Sunlight91]

AMD needs a CPU at $100 or less in order to replace all the entry level mini PCs with a Intel N100/N95. The 8500G beats those by 100% in single core and 400% in multi-core. This kind of CPU belongs in a tiny box behind the monitor or TV. There is no need to test it with a full ATX motherboard and graphics cards. Then idle power consumption should be under 10W. Even my larger SFF office PC (HP Prodesk, i5 9500) needs just 7W in idle with far more IO.

 

[sLowEnd]

Cezanne's Vega graphics are quite dated, but but AV1 now decodes fast enough on any SSSE3 CPU (1080p) and most recent quad-cores should handle 4K
11th-14th Gen UHD Graphics have AV1 decode capabilities.
NVIDIA RTX 30-series GPUs and newer have AV1 decode capabilities, 3050 6GB works on slot power and has full support for HTPC/video workloads, despite bad value for gaming
Always More Disappointments, Navi 24 has very limited video decoding capabilities, AV1 is not compatible, however, software decoding is still viable
Broadwell-EP halo 22-core/44-thread Xeon 2699 v4 is still $15 cheaper than this processor on AliExpress, with this much CPU performance you'll be encoding AV1 with it. Chinese X99 motherboards are extremely inexpensive in comparison to even A620 motherboards
Complete Skylake-era Optiplexes can be found in the $80-100 range on eBay, MercadoLibre, OLX, etc.

I rest my case, $160 is just rotten for this CPU, just, really rotten. Even with the potential argument that you can upgrade to a Raphael or Granite Ridge CPU down the line, it's still $160 for a chip that's... gonna be effectively discarded? No matter how I look at it I can't see this being a justifiable price for this particular product

The thing about AV1 decode isn't necessarily that CPUs can't handle it in software; a lot of them can do it pretty well, but the power consumption is pretty ugly compared to something with proper hardware acceleration for it.

e.g. https://www.xtof.info/AV1-decoding-energy-usage.html

 

[Chrispy_]

Can you list all trillion for me please?

Yeah, my own HTPC is a relative monster with a 5900X and 4070S in it, but the appeal here with this 8500G is that it could be extremely small and quiet, whilst having enough horsepower on both the CPU and GPU front to do what most people use an HTPC for.

Idle power on my system is probably terrible.