AMD Ryzen 7 8700G Desktop Processor 8 cores 16 Threads 24 MB Cache 4.2 GHz Upto 5.1 GHz AM5 Socket (100-100001236BOX)

I bought this 8700G for a media and light gaming PC for the lounge. It also set’s up foundations for a future proof AM5 route. This maybe still a few year’s off with AMD still releasing AM4 5000 CPU’s like x3d and GT.

On release it is needing a BIOS update to remove a cycling of power dropping. This is because “STAPM”; it behaves as a handheld Z1 extreme (and performs as one) A future update will remove this artefact.
EDIT Update v 2.02 already released!

The 780M internal graphics are on par with a gtx1650 or rx580/Rx6400. It has 12 CU based on RDNA3. The processing power is between 7600 and 7700x. I only plan to play light games at 1080p on this; Cyberpunk (see my experience below) and Baldur’s Gate 3 can get good around 60 FPS. Assassin Creed Valhalla got 67. Some reviews did 1440p in games like Skyrim and God of War. I have another AM4-based PC for heavy gaming. A review got Ratchet & Clank >40 FPS at 1440p….

As an APU it benefits from multi-channel RAM. Don’t use a single RAM, don’t use 4 lanes either it’s counterproductive; 2 is the sweet-spot. I use dual channel in a Asrock phantom ITX mobo.
For overclocking and to get the most out of this APU get a B650 minimum (but not Gigabyte, functions disabled) with ‘PBO’ enabled and ‘EXPO/XMP setting to RAM if not manually OC. Do not get the cheaper A620 (potentially stock CPU only settings. PBO and EXPO is there but some say it doesn’t truely enable.
Try to maximise the RAM frequency/ low CL for better performance; reviews mainly use 6000 or 6400 mhz. Some reviews have got it >7200mhz but that wasn’t in a small form factor build like mine. Offical is 5200 but they hint 6000 is ‘sweet spot’. 32GB is a must if you plan to play demanding games Like Alan Wake II (at low settings) you may not get the most out of the chip with just 16 GB. As an example with 16GB 5600mhz (2x8GB) in the system i got FPS 36-49 (No fidelity boost) Cyberpunk v2.0 with 8GB UMA vRAM.
Auto assigned vRAM is 0.3 and see’s an improvement when set at 2GB (UMA ‘game mode’) but less so an improvement setting between 4-8GB as FPS seem within margin of error, less than 5 FPS gained.

With 32GB 6800mhz with no fidelity boost and UMA v16GB the fps was 37-50 av 43.
With fidelity boost it av 60.5 (max 53-70)
With Core isolation disabled FPS increased to give Av 69.82 (59.63-83.34).

Screen Space Reflection…disable this for better performance especially if trying 1440p. It could be said that 16GB is fine for most games at 1080p (except Allan Wake 2 clocking 19GB vRAM). If you want to try 1440p 32GB is a must.

The AI monitoring is a bit limited atm as AMD and windows task manager are being developed. It will allow some tasks to not dip into either the CPU or iGPU. NPU clocks at 1.6 Ghz with total throughput 39 TOPS (16 coming from the NPU). One example of applied use is in video calling background and filters. Not sure of significance but the APU can run windows AI Copilot.

Comes with a taller ‘Spire’ and not the ‘Stealth’ CPU cooler as described. Not sure why as both 8700G and 8600G are 65W. If all EXPO, PBO etc is applied for best performance it’s more likely 156W so cooling options should be considered for such OC.

Photo shows Benchmarks my (left) AM4 5800x3d with 7800xt GPU vs (right) AM5 8700G both with 32GB RAM dual channel.

With a GPU that is roughly 20% as powerful as the RTX4060Ti this is not going to get you into 4K gaming. 1080P however is a different story. The power output of this APU is roughly 4.5TFLOPS while the 4060Ti is about 22TFLOPS at FP32 and the PS5 stands in at 10.2TFLOPS. Where this APU stands out above the rest is that with a power draw at only 65 watts you can play most games at 1080P on low to mid settings and with a range of 32 to 65FPS. That being said this APU is perfect for making Sub 3L size compact computers with mini ITX motherboards on air cooling that are outstanding performers for younger kids or adults that are light gamers. Additionally if you have more than just a few kids this is a cost effective way to make multiple, “capable” computers very cheaply.