AMD’s Ryzen 5000-series APUs intrigued us when they were announced in April. They bring together the company’s latest Zen 3 processor core with Vega 8 Radeon graphics on a single chip. That combination of performance would be great for a tiny desktop, especially if you need to handle a bit of gaming on the side. But, when they were first announced, AMD said the Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 5 5600G chips would only be available on pre-built systems. Today at Computex, AMD officially announced that consumers will be able to buy the 5600G and 5700G on August 5th for $259 and $359, respectively.
That puts the 5700G — an 8-core, 16-thread chip that tops out 4.6GHz — well below the popular 5800X, which goes for around $449. The six-core, 12-thread 5600G, meanwhile, is a slight value play against the $299 5600X. AMD says the 5700G is up to 63 percent faster than Intel’s comparable Core i7-11700 when it comes video editing with DaVinci Resolve 4K. As for gaming, the company claims it’s nearly 2.5 times faster in Rogue Company while playing in 1080p with high settings.
As usual, we’d have to test these chips ourselves to confirm AMD’s claims. But given how well the 4000-series APUs performed, I wouldn’t be surprised if its Radeon graphics continue to trounce Intel’s integrated hardware. As for why you’d buy one of these things, they may be a good option for PC builders who can’t yet get their hands on a powerful discrete GPU. The Vega 8 graphics should let you get some light 1080p gaming in, especially for less demanding titles.
