Two new AMD Ryzen CPUs have simply been given a worldwide launch, and with cheaper costs than anticipated, however we suggest avoiding these new processors for gaming. Beforehand solely obtainable in China, the brand new AMD Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F are mainly the identical as the corporate’s newest APUs with built-in Radeon graphics, however they don’t have the built-in GPU, and their specs are drastically reduce down elsewhere too.
Each these AMD CPUs have a massively decreased L3 cache, with the Ryzen 7 8700F solely having 16MB, for instance, in contrast with 32MB on the Ryzen 7 7700X. Even at their cheaper-than-expected costs, these new CPUs are nonetheless impossible to make it onto our greatest gaming CPU information.
At first of Could 2024, Amazon jumped the gun on the Ryzen 7 8700F launch and listed it at a value of $299.99. That’s nonetheless the worth of the CPU over on Amazon, however now that the CPU has formally launched within the US, it’s now appeared on the market at retailers akin to NewEgg for $269, though it’s out of inventory.
After all, that $269 value is certainly an enchancment on the originally-mooted $299 value and, not like AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, the 8700G additionally has a neural processing unit (NPU) for AI. Nonetheless, for gaming, $269 remains to be too costly for the gaming efficiency on supply. For simply an additional $20, the Ryzen 7 7700X has double the quantity of L3 cache, in addition to a a lot increased increase clock of 5.4GHz, in contrast with 5GHz for the Ryzen 7 8700F.
That’s not all, both. The Ryzen 7 8700F additionally solely has 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes on your graphics card and SSD, in contrast with 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes on the Ryzen 7 7700X. That’s not a deal-breaker proper now, until you need a super-fast PCIe 5.0 SSD, such because the Essential T705, but it surely’s a future-proofing drawback you wouldn’t count on from a brand new CPU in 2024.
You may forgive these shortcomings on an APU, such because the Ryzen 5 8600G, because it saves you having to purchase a graphics card if you happen to’re glad operating video games at low settings, however these CPUs actually should be cheaper.
In the meantime, the Ryzen 5 8400F has appeared on NewEgg for $172, which is once more cheaper than the originally-leaked value of $189.99, however not by sufficient to make this CPU value shopping for. The 8400F doesn’t even have the 8700F’s AI {hardware}, and its increase clock of 4.7GHz is even decrease than the 5GHz on the Ryzen 5 8600G. If you would like an inexpensive six-core CPU for gaming, you’ll be significantly better off shopping for the $189 Ryzen 5 7600 as an alternative, which boosts to five.1GHz and has extra L3 cache.
In case you’re searching for an honest AMD gaming GPU, be sure you take a look at our Ryzen 7 7800X3D overview, as this CPU has an enormous 96MB of L3 cache, because of AMD’s 3D V-Cache know-how, and it’s amazingly quick in video games.
