Enlarge / AMD's first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors are what the company used to call "APUs," a combination of a fast integrated GPU and a reasonably capable CPU. (credit: AMD)

AMD's G-series Ryzen desktop processors have always been a bit odd—a little behind the curve on AMD's latest CPU architectures, but with integrated graphics performance that's enough for a tiny and/or cheap gaming desktop without a dedicated graphics card. They're also usually updated much more slowly than AMD's other desktop Ryzens. Today, AMD is announcing a new lineup of Ryzen 8000G processors, chips that should provide a substantial boost over 2021's Ryzen 5000G chips as long as you don't mind buying a new socket AM5 motherboard and RAM to go with them.

There are three new processors releasing on January 31. The most powerful is the $329 Ryzen 7 8700G, an 8-core CPU with a Radeon 780M GPU. The next step down, and probably the best combination of price and performance, is the $229 6-core Ryzen 5 8600G, which comes with a slightly slower Radeon 760M GPU.

At the bottom of the range is the $179 Ryzen 5 8500G. It also includes six CPU cores, but with a wrinkle: two of those cores are regular Zen 4 cores, while four are smaller "Zen 4c" cores that are optimized to save space rather than run at high clock speeds. Zen 4c can do exactly the same things as Zen 4, but Zen 4c won't be as fast, something to be aware of when you're comparing the chips. The 8500G includes a Radeon 740M GPU.

Enlarge / Four new Ryzen 5000 CPUs, all riffs on existing Ryzen 5000 CPUs. (credit: AMD)

AMD announced the first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors today: a new lineup of socket AM5 CPUs that bring RDNA 3 integrated GPUs and an AI-accelerating NPU to its desktop platform for the first time. But the company also spent some time on new budget chips for its last-generation AM4 platform. The four new Ryzen 5000 processors cover everything from budget office desktops with integrated GPUs to cost-conscious gaming systems.

At the top of the range is the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, an 8-core CPU with an extra 64MB slab of L3 cache stacked on top of the main CPU die. At $249, it will be a little over $100 cheaper than the 5800X3D, but with the same core count, cache size, and a slightly lower maximum clock speed (4.1 GHz, down from 4.5 GHz). AMD compared it favorably to the Core i5-13600K in gaming workloads, a chip that currently retails for a bit over $280.

The Ryzen 7 5700 is a $175 8-core processor without 3D V-Cache that should still perform reasonably well in most workloads, though AMD's spec sheet says that it has less cache than the 5700X and only supports PCI Express 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0. This indicates that the 5700 is actually a 5700G with the integrated graphics disabled; it will be a bit slower than the Ryzen 5700X, despite their similar names, core counts, and clock speeds. The Ryzen 5 5600GT and 5500GT are 6- and 4-core chips with Vega-based integrated graphics, both intended for lower-end systems. At $140 and $125, they essentially amount to minor clock speed bumps for the existing Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 3 5300G .

Enlarge / A now-deleted Intel presentation makes a good point, but with a side of disingenuousness.

AMD changed the way it numbers its Ryzen laptop processors last year, switching to a new system that simultaneously provides more concrete information than the old one while also partially obfuscating the exact age of the various CPU and GPU architectures being mixed-and-matched.

For instance, a knowledgeable buyer can look at the "3" in the Ryzen 5 7530U processor and determine that it uses an older Zen 3-based CPU core. But a less-knowledgeable buyer could be forgiven for looking at the "7000" part and assuming that the chip is significantly newer and better than 2021's Ryzen 5600U, when in reality the two are substantially identical.

Intel came out swinging against this naming scheme in a confrontational slide deck this week—now deleted, but preserved for posterity by VideoCardz—where it accuses AMD of selling "snake oil" by using older processor architectures in ostensibly "new" chips.

Enlarge (credit: AMD )

The Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU series was AMD’s first to include a small integrated GPU by default to make the chips more appealing for budget and business desktops where a dedicated GPU would be overkill. These bare-bones GPUs won't play many games, as we found when we tested them , but they're a reliable way to light up a couple of monitors.

AMD said at the time that it also planned to continue making desktop APUs, the company's longstanding terminology for a Ryzen CPU paired with a more powerful integrated Radeon GPU, but we haven't heard anything about a new Ryzen desktop APU since. That could be changing early next year, according to the release notes for a slew of BIOS updates for Gigabyte motherboards . According to Gigabyte, a new series of APUs for socket AM5 motherboards will be released starting in January 2024, and they'll be compatible with any current socket AM5 motherboard running version 1.1.0.0 or newer of AMD's AGESA firmware.

Tom's Hardware has a breakdown of the Ryzen 8000G series, purportedly gleaned from this new AGESA version. According to this, the chips will be named the Ryzen 8000G series, and they'll use the same "Phoenix" silicon that AMD uses in its Ryzen 7040U laptop processors and the Ryzen Z1 series of chips for gaming handhelds.

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel's new desktop processor generations haven't always come with significant generational improvements in recent years, as the company has struggled with new manufacturing tech that enables big leaps in performance and power efficiency. For every major jump—the 12th-generation CPUs, codenamed Alder Lake , come to mind—you usually get several faster but less-than-thrilling iterations.

Intel is officially launching its 14th-generation desktop processors today, and they're firmly in that iterative, non-thrilling group, even compared to last year's 13th-generation chips. The good news for price-conscious PC builders is that they'll continue to work in all current 600- and 700-series motherboards after a BIOS update, and Intel isn't launching a series of new motherboards to accompany them—there aren't many compelling reasons to upgrade from a 12th-gen setup to a 14th-gen one, but it's an available option.

Even the branding Intel is using here signifies that the processors are a throwback— next-gen Meteor Lake chips for laptops and all of Intel's other chips are losing the generational and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding in favor of "Core" and "Core Ultra." By Intel's admission, the last gasp of the 14th-generation branding here is a nod to how similar they are to the 13th-generation chips that preceded them (and, for that matter, the 12th-gen ones before that).

Enlarge / An 8th-generation Intel Core desktop CPU, one of several CPU generations affected by the Downfall bug. (credit: Mark Walton)

It's a big week for CPU security vulnerabilities. Yesterday, different security researchers published details on two different vulnerabilities, one affecting multiple generations of Intel processors and another affecting the newest AMD CPUs. " Downfall " and " Inception " (respectively) are different bugs, but both involve modern processors' extensive use of speculative execution (a la the original Meltdown and Spectre bugs ), both are described as being of "medium" severity, and both can be patched either with OS-level microcode updates or firmware updates with fixes incorporated.

AMD and Intel have both already released OS-level microcode software updates to address both issues. Both companies have also said that they're not aware of any active in-the-wild exploits of either vulnerability. Consumer, workstation, and server CPUs are all affected, making patching particularly important for server administrators.

It will be up to your PC, server, or motherboard manufacturer to release firmware updates with the fixes after Intel and AMD make them available.

Enlarge (credit: AMD)

A recently disclosed bug in many of AMD's recent consumer, workstation, and server processors can cause the chips to leak data at a rate of up to 30 kilobytes per core per second, writes Tavis Ormandy, a member of Google's Project Zero security team. Executed properly, the so-called "Zenbleed" vulnerability (CVE-2023-20593) could give attackers access to encryption keys and root and user passwords, along with other sensitive data from any system using a CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture.

The bug allows attackers to swipe data from a CPU's registers. Modern processors attempt to speed up operations by guessing what they'll be asked to do next, called "speculative execution." But sometimes the CPU guesses wrong; Zen 2 processors don't properly recover from certain kinds of mispredictions, which is the bug that Zenbleed exploits to do its thing.

The bad news is that the exploit doesn't require physical hardware access and can be triggered by loading JavaScript on a malicious website. The good news is that, at least for now, there don't seem to be any cases of this bug being exploited in the wild yet, though this could change quickly now that the vulnerability has been disclosed, and the bug requires precise timing to exploit.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X3D. (credit: AMD)

A surprise twist for owners of older AMD PCs using socket AM4: AMD is announcing one last (?) processor for the aging socket, a six-core Ryzen 5 5600X3D that brings the company's 3D V-Cache chip stacking technology to a $229 chip.

The catch? The new CPU will only be available through Micro Center, a brick-and-mortar tech retailer that doesn't ship most of what it sells to online buyers. The chip will only be sold for as long as Micro Center's supply holds out, though Tom's Hardware reports that the company will have "several months'" worth of stock.

Like the Ryzen 5800X3D , the 5600X3D combines a regular Zen 3 processor die with an extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache stacked on top. Relative to its regular Zen 3 counterparts—in this case, the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X—the chip will consume slightly more power and run at somewhat lower clock speeds, which can make it slower than the non-X3D chips in tasks that don't benefit from the extra cache. They also have limited support for overclocking and undervolting. However, games in particular tend to like the extra cache a lot, benefitting people who want to pair a high-end GPU with the cheapest CPU that won't hold it back.