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.

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F CPU has been popping up via various leaks—with no official announcements made despite photos, basic specifications and benchmark results appearing online. Tom's Hardware could not extract a comment directly from Team Red, so it pivoted to inside sources instead to find out more about the mysterious Zen 4 iGPU-less processor. The news site discovered that this model is very likely going to be a Chinese market exclusive—insiders reckon that it will be released closer to the end of this month. Retailers and e-tailers in the region are getting first dibs, with the Ryzen 5 7500F also made available to SIs (system integrators), so pre-built computers featuring this AM5 CPU could be released soon after.

Tom's Hardware believes that the: "Ryzen 5 7500F is very similar to the Ryzen 5 7600 and will operate with a 65 W TDP, and thus have slightly lower boost clock speeds than the 7600." It suspects that a recently published benchmark showing that single-core performance edges past the Ryzen 5 7600X (105 W TDP) is not all that accurate—these results should be "taken with a grain of salt." According to their verified sources, the Ryzen 5 7500F should "perform slightly slower than the regular 65 W Ryzen 5 7600 (non-X)." The article presents some hope that AMD is simply market testing the CPU prior to a possible USA rollout, but insiders indicate that company plans have the Ryzen 5 7500F marked for launch in China only.

The Puget Systems benchmark database outed AMD's Ryzen 5 7500F 6-core/12-thread processor last week—industry experts proposed that it was the first example of a Ryzen 7000 SKU with a disabled iGPU. A South Korean retailer indicated unit pricing of around $170-180, with a possible local launch date on July 7. It seems that retail units have not hit the market (at the time of writing), but Geekbench 6.1 results have since appeared online. According to an entry on the Geekbench database—that was spotted by Olrak29 earlier today—the Ryzen 5 7500F has a base clock of 3.7 GHz. It can boost up to 5.0 GHz on a single core, while all cores can reach a maximum of 4.8 GHz. The listing confirms that this new SKU sits firmly in the AMD "Raphael" CPU family.

The processor was tested on a system running Microsoft Windows 11—partial specifications of the evaluation build include an ASUS TUF Gaming A620M-PLUS WIFI motherboard and 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM. The tested Ryzen 5 7500F CPU achieved scores of 2782 points (single-core) and 13323 points (multi-threaded), which places it slightly ahead of the Ryzen 5 7600X in multi-thread performance. It trails slightly behind with its single-core result, but these figures are impressive considering that the Ryzen 5 7500F will likely be offered at a more budget friendly price when compared to its closest iGPU-enabled siblings.