AMD is preparing its Ryzen 5 7500F processor for a global launch according to reports from earlier today—Team Red's German operation has since informed local media outlets about its updated international release strategy for the iGPU-less Zen 4 desktop SKU. Markus Lindner, a regional company spokesman stated: "This processor model will be available starting July 23, 2023 at 9PM ET. It will be available in greater China as a processor-in-box, and in the rest of world as an option for select system builders."

Chinese reviewers have been getting hands-on experience with the Ryzen 5 7500F, with early reports pointing to impressive performance for its price point ($180) when lined up against competing Intel Core i5-13400 and i5-13400F CPUs. International buyers could express concern regarding AMD Germany's mentioning that availability will be somewhat limited to system integrators. Hopefully these "select system builders" will have good distribution links to retail outlets—70% of TPU quick poll participants expressed interest in seeing a western launch (prior to AMD's "global" announcement).

The China-specific AMD Ryzen 5 7500F desktop processor could see a wider international launch, reports VideoCardz, citing the AMD website, which has marked its regional availability as "global." The processor is priced at USD $180 for the retail PIB package. The 7500F is a 6-core/12-thread processor based on the same "Raphael" Zen 4 MCM as the 7600X, but lacks integrated graphics, has a lower 65 W TDP, and slightly lower clock speeds. The processor saw a China-exclusive release earlier this week. Chinese and regional media with access to samples reviewed the processor, noting that its gaming performance 6% behind that of the Ryzen 5 7600X at 1080p, but more importantly, the Ryzen 5 7500F is 13% faster than the Core i5-13400 in terms of average FPS, and about 8% faster in 1% low FPS.

This makes the Ryzen 5 7500F a faster gaming processor than the $200 Core i5-13400, and the $180 Core i5-13400F, which it was originally designed to square off against. The Ryzen 5 7500F is configured with 6 cores and 12 threads, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor has a base frequency of 3.70 GHz, with a 5.00 GHz boost that's just 100 MHz behind that of the Ryzen 5 7600 (65 W), and 300 MHz behind the 7600X (105 W). The "F" in the brand extension indicates a lack of integrated graphics, which shouldn't be a dealbreaker for the processor's intended audience—PC gamers. AMD is including a Wraith Stealth stock cooler with the retail 7500F, which coupled with A620 chipset motherboards that start at $125, should make for a formidable mainstream gaming PC platform with ample upgrade headroom.

AMD's recently added Ryzen 5 7500F for the AM5 socket was initially said to only be available in the PRC, but according to AMD, it will apparently be available globally. That said, AMD apparently only seeded review units to select Asian media, among them Quasar Zone in Korea, who put the six core, 12 thread CPU through its paces. Overall performance is very close to the Ryzen 5 7600, which isn't really all that strange, considering the two only differ by 100 MHz in both base and boost clock. In most of the benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 7500F is around two to three percent slower than the Ryzen 5 7600 on average.

When compared to the slightly more pricey Intel Core i5-13400, AMD falls behind multithreaded apps but comes out on top in most of the games tested, with the usual odd exception as would be expected. On average, the Ryzen 5 7500F is some 13 percent faster in the game benchmarks at 1080p, although this is using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. It even beats the overall much faster Intel Core i5-13500 in gaming by around nine percent on average. However, the Ryzen 5 7500F system loses out to the two Intel systems when it comes to power efficiency, drawing around 20 Watts more on average when gaming. At US$179.99 it seems like AMD finally has a budget friendly CPU for the AM5 platform, if you're willing to lose the integrated GPU. It's unknown when the CPU will be available outside of Asia at this point in time.