AMD is expanding the range of processors for the Socket AM5 desktop platform. Recently, the developer expanded the Ryzen 8000 chip line by adding Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F models to the new series. The company offered the next CPUs without drawing much attention to them – the corresponding pages with the description of technical characteristics appeared on the AMD website. What is the peculiarity of the presented solutions?

Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F specs

Judging by the fact that the model names contain the “F” index, it’s easy to guess that we’re dealing with chips without integrated graphics. Indeed, Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F are offered with deactivated iGPUs. This option in itself is quite unusual for chips of the Ryzen 8000 line, which were initially positioned as APUs with a fairly powerful integrated video core. However, AMD is trying to expand its product range, giving customers the opportunity to choose the best solution for their needs.

Ryzen 8000G/F CPU line

So, the older model Ryzen 7 8700F is a derivative of the Ryzen 7 8700G. This is an 8-core 16-thread chip with Zen 4 architecture, which has a frequency formula of 4.1/5.0 GHz and is equipped with 16 MB L3. As you can see, the difference with the older model is minus 100 MHz and the lack of integrated graphics. Unfortunately, in addition to the iGPU, the Ryzen AI module is also deactivated.

As for the Ryzen 5 8400F, it is already a 6-core 12-thread processor with a frequency formula of 4.2/4.7 GHz and 16 MB L3. One could assume that we are talking about a slightly slower Ryzen 5 8500G with graphics turned off, but judging by the specification, the Ryzen 5 8400F is structurally similar to the Ryzen 5 8600G. All six cores here have the Zen 4 architecture, while the Ryzen 5 8500G has a combination of two Zen4 cores and four more compact Zen4c cores operating at lower frequencies.

As with the Ryzen 7 8700F, a discrete graphics card is required to run the system with the Ryzen 5 8400F, and the chip itself also did not receive Ryzen AI to process AI algorithms.

Ryzen 5 8400F performance

Computing performance is hardly a surprise here. The first express tests show that Ryzen 7 8700F is only minimally inferior to Ryzen 7 8700G. In turn, the Ryzen 5 8400F is 8-10% slower than the Ryzen 5 7500F in multi-threaded mode. In games, the difference will probably be more noticeable due to the larger L3 capacity of the latter CPU. However, the price will decide everything.

But it’s the recommended price tags that are the issue. The fact is that Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F will initially be offered only to OEM partners. Surely these models will eventually also go on sale at retail, but the official MSRP for these models will unfortunately not be officially announced. So it will all be decided by the real market demand.

The first mentions of Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F appeared at a partner conference in China, where other AMD products were also announced. So initially, there was speculation that these processors would be offered only for the eastern region. But it seems that a wider geographic availability of Phoenix without iGPU is expected. Are such processors even needed with the availability of Ryzen 7000 chips?