For the people who always maximize their PC budget by not committing to anything that they don’t use, the new AMD CPUs of the Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F are going to fill that role pretty well because these are the iGPU-less options.
Touted as the most affordable Ryzen 8000 series processors, the two new SKUs are practically the same as the “iGPU-included” 8700G and 8500G counterparts aside from minor clock adjustments. Specifically, the 8700F has a base/boost frequency of 4.1GHz/5.0GHz while the 8400F is at 4.2GHz/4.7GHz while maintaining the same cores and threads count of 8C/16T and 6C/12T.
Cache-wise, the Ryzen 7 option has 24MB versus the Ryzen 5’s 22MB yet both of them have 65W TDP and come with an included Wraith Stealth cooler as usual.
The Ryzen 7 is a bit funny though, as they left the Ryzen AI NPU intact for you to run some AI inferencing and Gen-AI applications but I’m not sure why one doesn’t utilize their discreet GPU to run it instead, especially if it is a full Team Red rig containing a Radeon 7000 series card.
If you’re an AMD fan then chances are you’ll appreciate these graphs showing how good they are in both games and productivity/processing applications but your results may vary depending on other factors.
Price and Availability
As mentioned, AMD is currently shipping the new Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F globally at the SRP of US$269 and US$169 so if you’re looking to get one, hit up one of your local PC shops and dealers.
