AMD Ryzen 5 8600G and Ryzen 7 8700G
PRICE 8600G, £220; 8700G, £310 AVAILABLE Now
AMD rolled out its Ryzen 8000G lineup of APUs at CES 2024, beating Intel to the punch as the first company to bring purpose-built AI accelerators to the desktop PC. As we’ve seen in the past, AMD builds its APUs for the desktop using the same silicon as its laptop chips. In this case, AMD uses the “Phoenix” architecture that employs the Zen 4 CPU architecture and RDNA 3 graphics engine. However, the lack of battery life concerns in desktop PCs allows the chip to run at higher power limits, thus unleashing the full power of the silicon. AMD’s two flagship models, the Ryzen 7 8700G and the Ryzen 5 8600G, boast eight and six cores respectively.
AMD also brought its new APU lineup up to modern standards with support for AM5’s DDR5 and PCI-E 4 connectivity. AMD’s APUs have historically dominated the entry-level gaming market as Intel doesn’t have processors with powerful enough integrated graphics to provide meaningful gaming performance, even for low-end gaming systems. Here, AMD claims it delivers 1080p-capable gaming performance, even in some AAA titles, albeit at reduced settings. With competitive pricing and bundled coolers, the new Ryzen APU models are poised to dominate the entry-level gaming segment once again. Paul Alcorn PRICE From £120 (5500GT) AVAILABLE Now
Intel Core 14th gen desktop CPUs
PRICE From £115 AVAILABLE Now
Intel released the overclockable, high-end K series of 14th generation desktop Core processors in October last year, and while they’re all solid chips we found little to shout about in our reviews (see issue 351, p46). This isn’t surprising, as they’re based on the same Raptor Lake design as 13th generation chips, but with minor clock increases. At CES, Intel announced the full 14th gen lineup, from the Core i3-14100F (£115) to the Core i9-14900 (£570). These are mainstream CPUs, with no overclocking capability, with even Intel’s benchmarking suggesting a modest 3% to 4% increase in speed compared to 13th gen Core desktop chips. The star of the releases is the Core i7-14700, which, thanks to four additional E-cores, has 12 cores compared to the eight of the i7-13700. Tim Danton
Intel Core 14th Gen
