Technology & Positioning
AMD launched their Ryzen 8000 Series desktop processors earlier this year, but decided to sample only the 8600G and 8700G for media reviews. The Ryzen 5 8500G is special, because it's AMD's first desktop processor that uses two different core types: Zen 4 and Zen 4c. The 8600G and 8700G use only Zen 4 cores. Both core types are built using the Zen 4 architecture, and they both run the same instructions and IPC—which is the biggest difference compared to what Intel is doing with their P-Cores and E-Cores. Unlike the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" CPUs, the Phoenix 2 silicon is a single monolithic design—there is no separate IO die and all cores, both Zen 4 and 4c are located in a single CCX, sharing one L3 cache. In terms of clock speeds you're getting 5 GHz on the big cores and 3.7 GHz on the smaller cores, the power limit is set to 65 W, which the processor will only reach in edge cases, not even during heavy gaming with the integrated GPU fully loaded.

Application Performance
With this review we're introducing our new 2024 CPU Test Suite, which runs the newest versions of our apps and includes new workloads, mostly for AI-related tasks, which are becoming more and more important every day. Averaged over these 49 tests, the Ryzen 5 8500G offers performance roughly matching the higher positioned Ryzen 7 5700G. It's also able to outperform the Intel 12400F by a small margin—a very important win. AMD's AM5 Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" CPUs are considerably faster though, the Ryzen 5 7600 is 20% faster in applications. Compared to older Socket AM4 processors, the Ryzen 5 8500G sits roughly between the Ryzen 5 5600X and the Ryzen 7 5700X. Overall, this is very respectable performance, especially for such an affordable processor that's targeted at lighter tasks like office, productivity and internet browsing.

On Intel, the thread scheduling between P-Cores and E-Cores has always been a bit complicated, because these are completely different architectures. On the Ryzen 5 8500G this is simpler, because the cores are identical from the perspective of the application—they support the same instructions and run the at the same IPC. The only difference is that the Zen 4c cores run at lower frequency and voltage. Still, Intel or AMD, both processor vendors have to rely on Microsoft Windows to make some scheduling decisions. Just like on Intel, if you minimize a workload's window, it will get pushed onto the efficient cores, which makes sense. As soon as you restore and focus the window, the workload will return to the performance cores, as expected. I tested a few scenarios and this mechanism works well, I haven't encountered any major scheduler failures.

Gaming Performance
Gaming performance with a discrete graphics card is limited by the fact that the whole processor has only 14 PCI-Express Gen 4 lanes in total, which means that for a graphics card only four lanes are available. Even if your motherboard supports x16 5.0, with a Ryzen 5 8500G installed, this slot will run at x4 4.0, because there's simply not enough lanes available in the CPU, and the remaining 12 lanes from the slot are not connected on the CPU side. While our dGPU testing clearly shows that the 8500G's FPS is lagging behind competing chips, I don't think this is a huge deal. Even with an RTX 4090, the performance hit (from x4 4.0) is around 10% on average I'd say, which is definitely significant, but not "terrible." The effect of the narrower lane configuration very much depends on the actual game—Alan Wake 2 and Remnant II seem to be the worst-cases. Even in this configuration, the gaming performance is higher than that of Ryzen 5 5700G, which connects the GPU using a x16 3.0 configuration—twice the bandwidth than x4 4.0. What makes the difference is the performance of the Zen 4 cores, which is excellent for gaming as we've seen in many Zen 4 reviews. Still, if your primary objective is to game with a discrete graphics card, then definitely consider the Ryzen 5 7600, which is just slightly more expensive. Another option could be the Intel 12100F or 12400F, which are more affordable and have similar or better gaming performance, but lack an integrated GPU, which won't be a problem in this scenario.

Integrated Graphics
As mentioned before, the Ryzen 5 8500G features integrated graphics. While there's an IGP on the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" processors, too, the latter is only for basic tasks and not for gaming. In our testing, the RDNA 3 iGPU of the 8500G achieved twice the FPS as the one in Ryzen 5 7600. It's also much faster than Intel's hopeless IGP, which had two games crashing, out of nine tested. Still, with an average FPS of 40 at 720p and 23 at 1080p (at lowest possible settings), the 8500 is definitely not the right choice for serious gaming. Even an older low-end graphics card like Radeon RX 6400 or GTX 1060 will achieve much better FPS. Only the GeForce GTX 1630 is roughly the speed of the 8500G iGPU. The bigger Ryzen 8000 processors have much stronger iGPUs, with 512 and 768 cores, whereas the 8500G has only 256 of them.

Power Consumption
The Phoenix 2 chip design used on the Ryzen 5 8500G was originally designed for thin and light laptops where energy-efficient operation is one of the most important capabilities. On top of that, AMD is fabricating their chip using TSMC's 4 nanometer node and it's a monolithic design, which further helps with power usage, because there's no IO die that's off-silicon that you need to push data over long distances, which is an energy-hungry task. The result is that Ryzen 5 8500G is the most power-efficient processor we've ever tested—by a big margin in many tests. Even when loaded with demanding tasks its power usage will stay at under 40 W, gaming with a discrete GPU is actually closer to just 20 W. Gaming with integrated GPU reaches between 20 and 40 W, depending on the game. Very impressive numbers, only the Intel 12100F can get somewhat close to these results and everything else is much higher. For our 2024 Test Suite upgrade we've added full system idle power measurements, which are very important, because many PCs spend most of their life in that state. Here the 8500G sits roughly in the middle of the pack with 64 W, which is just a few W more than competing Intel setups, but considerably lower than the "big" Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which reach around 80 W, because they have to power the IO die as well.

Cooling Requirements
Cooling such a minimal heat output is really easy. Unlike most other processors, AMD does include a basic heatsink with the CPU, which helps bring down total system cost. While not that powerful, the cooler is sufficient for the heat generated as our tests show—there is no thermal throttling, unless your case has terrible ventilation. This is good news for builders on a budget or people who want to set up a small form factor machine. While the stock cooler will reach 80°C+ under full load that's not a problem at all, the thermal cutoff is 95°C and the CPU is designed to run 24/7 at that for multiple years. Using a high-end air cooler like the Noctua D15 results in quite low temperatures that are still higher than some competing processors from Intel. The reason is that for the AM5 platform the heat spreader is thicker than on other processors. AMD had to go for this compromise in order to achieve cooler compatibility with Socket AM4.

Overclocking
While AMD Ryzen CPUs typically have their multiplier unlocked for easy overclocking, this is not an option on the Ryzen 5 8500G. While there's no official confirmation, I suspect that this has to do with the fact that there's two different core types in the processor, each running different clocks and voltages. I further suspect that the limitation is the BIOS software and Ryzen Master, which simply don't have the UI to set clocks separately. Considering that there's just one Phoenix 2 SKU on the market for Socket AM5, and it will probably be the only one for quite a while, it makes sense not to invest developer resources here. You can still overclock using PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive), which gives you control over the parameters for AMD's Boost Clock mechanisms. We ran a full round of our test suite at maximized settings (x10 scalar, +200 MHz clock, no power limits) and got a 2% performance improvement in applications, and no significant gains in gaming with a discrete graphics card. With integrated graphics we saw a small 2-3% performance uplift. While it's not nothing, it's not much, which suggests that the 8500G really isn't that limited in terms of power and clocks. If there was multiplier-based overclocking I suspect a bit higher gains could be unlocked. GPU overclocking on the other hand worked very well, and we could reach 3.5 GHz, or +25% in frequency, which translated into 10+% higher FPS.

Platform
We've seen very long boot times from the bigger AM5 processors in the past, and it seems that this is something that AMD can't really fix conclusively. An interesting discovery of this review is that boot times using Phoenix 2 are MUCH faster, there's maybe a second or two spent on memory training and the whole POST process runs just as fast as on AM4 or Intel—a huge improvement. This confirms that the problem is not DDR5 on AMD AM5, but the memory controller inside the IO die (which isn't used by Phoenix 2). Ryzen 8500G has its origins in thin-and-light laptops, which have limited connectivity, usually without discrete graphics, so it makes sense to design a PCIe configuration that's cost-effective and doesn't waste precious die space. On the other hand, when used in a full-size desktop environment, this means compromises. For example, the maximum PCIe speed supported is Gen 4, not Gen 5. This isn't a big deal for M.2 NVMe storage because, outside of synthetic benchmarks, Gen 5 SSDs are only marginally faster than the best Gen 4 drives and are too expensive to be of interest to buyers of an entry-level CPU like this. When gaming with a graphics card the PCIe bandwidth is fairly limited though, just PCIe 4.0 x4, even when running in a motherboard with a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot.

Pricing & Alternatives
The Ryzen 5 8500G is currently listed online for $160, which makes it the most affordable Socket AM5 processor right now. Only the OEM-exclusive 7500F is a little bit cheaper. This makes the processor an interesting choice for an upgrade to AM5, without spending too much on the processor itself, for example when you're waiting for the release of 9800X3D, or are saving money for a 7800X3D but want to build a gaming rig right now. While the integrated graphics aren't good enough for serious gaming, they are fine for older and lighter titles, especially if you're willing to play at lowest details, possibly with FSR upscaling. On the other hand, at this point you might just want to buy a gaming console, which should deliver a better overall experience. Strong competition for the 8500G comes from the Ryzen 7600, especially if you plan on running with a graphics card. Another interesting combo is the Intel Core i3-12100F, no iGPU, but full x16 for the GPU, and it sells for only $85, which frees up $80 that could go towards a better graphics card. The Intel LGA1700 platform also supports running with DDR4 in some motherboards, which could help bring your total cost down even further, especially if you have some DDR4 memory lying around. I'm not sure if Intel's i3-12400 for $145 is monumentally different to 8500G. It's a 6c/12t design, too, but with x16 5.0 for the GPU, but a much weaker iGPU. If you want more application performance, then Core i7-12700K for $230 is worth a look—it's 40% faster in computing workloads and 20% ahead at 1080p gaming. AMD's older Ryzen 7 5700X is $160, just like the 8500G, not a good option unless you have an AM4 system that you want to continue using, in which case it's a quick and easy upgrade, maybe look for a used one. I don't think I'd consider Ryzen 7 5800X3D as direct competitor to the 8500G. It's a wonderful processor, but at $330 it's much too expensive. If performance of the integrated GPU is important for you, then by all means do buy the Ryzen 5 8600G for $180, it comes with a GPU that has twice (!) the core count, which means FPS will end up much higher. Just like the 8500G it's a 6-core/12-thread chip, but all cores are full Zen 4, which means higher clock speeds across the board. Power consumption and heat output will probably be a bit higher, but that won't be a problem unless you're trying to build some kind of SFF or media PC system. For a media PC the 8500G looks like a fantastic choice, because it has good codec and driver support and the GPU cores could be used to accelerate madVR video processing.

While the Ryzen 5 8500G is a solid product there are a bunch of compromises that make it miss our "Recommended" award quite narrowly, like the limited PCIe bandwidth, the lack of multiplier-based overclocking and the fact that there's no NPU, which could come in handy to accelerate AI workloads.

Upcoming Releases
AMD has announced their new Zen 5 processors, which will launch in the coming weeks. The lineup starts with the Ryzen 9 9600X though, which will certainly cost more than the 7600X right now ($200), I'm not sure if doubt that that can significantly affect the value proposition of the 8500G. Intel has released a bunch of 14th gen entry-level CPUs earlier this year, like the i3-14100 ($140) and the i5-14400 ($200), I'll be posting reviews of these soon. Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake is expected to launch later this year, on a new socket, with a major redesign compared to existing Raptor Lake LGA1700 processors, which could make things interesting, but performance and pricing is unknown, and it seems likely that Intel will launch high-end SKUs first, like they've done in the past.