AMD RYZEN 7 5700G 0G
Ryzen & Radeon combined.i ed AMD’s epic new CPU
STRUGGLING TO FIND a graphics card in these silicon-starved times? AMD suggests that, with the new Ryzen 7 5700G, you might not need one. The Ryzen 5000 series of CPUs have been well received, though, like every other manufacturer of processors and graphics cards, AMD has been affected by wider semiconductor market issues. Limited supply meant that production priority was given to the high-end chips in both the red team’s CPU and GPU stacks. That means we haven’t seen any really affordable Zen 3-based processors at all, at least not in the retail market.
That doesn’t necessarily change with the introduction of the ‘Cezanne’ family of APUs. The series is led by this beauty, the eight-core Ryzen 7 5700G ($359), which is joined by the hexacore Ryzen 5 5600G ($229) and the quad-core Ryzen 3 5300G. That’s a little under the current pricing for the GPU-less Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X, and arguably, you get more for your money, too.
Finally, AMD has processors that combine its strong Zen 3 architecture with capable Vega-based integrated graphics. The promise of Zen 3 cores and best-in-class integrated graphics has been eagerly anticipated and we’ll be watching to see how fully the 5000G series models filter out into the market.
As for the 5700G’s specs. It’s a Zen 3-based processor with a 7nm, 180mm2 10.7 billion transistor monolithic die, with eight cores and 16 threads. And by monolithic, we mean that it doesn’t match the chiplet design of the other Ryzen 5000-series CPUs. Instead, it squeezes everything into one traditional package design, similar to Intel’s designs.
The 5700G has a base frequency of 3.8GHz and a boost frequency of 4.6GHz, yet still has a desirable 65W TDP. But to meet this 65W target, some sacrifices have had to be made; it’s not simply a down-clocked 5800X with integrated graphics bolted on. You lose half of the L3 cache and PCIe 4.0 support too. The latter isn’t desirable but, apart from losing that peak NVMe SSD performance, much of the target market may not even notice.
The integrated graphics counts as best-in-class, though it’s still based on the aging, but reworked and optimized, Vega architecture. That comprises eight compute units, and 512 GCN cores, operating at 2GHz. RDNA-based graphics, not to mention RDNA 2, will have to wait at least one more generation.
Productivity and gaming tasks all take a big step forward over the popular Zen 2 Ryzen 7 3700X. The exception being sequential SSD performance, where the lack of PCIe 4.0 counts against it when put up against the rest of the Ryzen 5000 clique. The 5800X, with its higher boost clock, extra TDP headroom, and increased cache is the better performer.
If you’re looking for a powerful HTPC or small machine, a PC for heavy multitasking, or need something with integrated graphics to tide you over until the GPU market returns to normality, the 5700G is an awesome APU. Add a highend GPU, even a GeForce RTX 3090 or Radeon RX 6900 XT with all the eye candy turned up, and you’d barely lose any real performance compared with any other processor we could mention.
PC gamers have been waiting for Zen 3 APUs, and it’s great that they’re finally here. You get the strong IPC and multithreaded prowess that Zen 3 brings to the table, paired with top-end integrated graphics. You can run a monitor or two and enjoy some basic gaming, or even better, true gaming with older or esport titles, while keeping around a 65W TDP. If you’re looking for a high-performing jack of all trades, AMD’s Ryzen 7 5700G is tough to beat.