AMD Unveils Ryzen 7 8700F And Ryzen 5 8400F Zen 4 CPUs For Budget Gaming Rigs
Following a somewhat stealthy launch in China in earlier this year, AMD is bringing its Ryzen 8000F series processors to the US market to give budget gaming builds a kick in the pants, while being relatively easy on the wallet or purse. What makes these Hawk Point CPUs relatively affordable is they're a BYOG—bring your own graphics—affair.
That's to say, they lack integrated graphics. One could argue that fusing off the iGPU flies in the face of a budget build and the argument wouldn't necessarily be wrong—it means a DIY builder must also purchase a graphics card, which adds to the cost of the build. However, even budget gaming PCs are best suited for a discrete graphics card, especially now that there are plenty of options out there from AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA.
Budget semantics aside, what we're looking at from AMD are two processor models, including the Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F. Both product pages are live on AMD's website but we've not seen a formal announcement from AMD. However, thanks to X/Twitter user @momomo_us, we have a handful of slides to digest, starting with the one above.
Starting with the higher end of the two, the Ryzen 7 8700F is an 8-core/16-thread chip with a 4.1GHz base clock, 5GHz max boost clock, 8MB of L2 cache and 16MB of L3 cache for 24MB total, and a 65W default TDP (configurable from 45-65W).
Sitting below that is the Ryzen 5 8400F with a 6-core/12-thread configuration, 4.2GHz base clock, 4.7GHz max boost clock, the same cache configuration, and the same TDP range.
Both processors are based on AMD's latest-generation Zen 4 architecture with an onboard neural processing unit (NPU) for AI chores. The above slide is a little quirky in that it lists RDNA 3 graphics, but AMD is referring to the use of a discrete graphics card, and specifically a Radeon RX 7000 series GPU, to achieve the chip's full AI capabilities.
The specs are overall similar to the Ryzen 7 8700G (8C/16T, 4.2GHz to 5.1GHz) and Ryzen 5 8600G (6C/12T, 4.3GHz to 5GHz). It basically amounts to a 100MHz difference in clocks, and of course the lack of integrated graphics.
In one of the slides, AMD compares the Ryzen 5 8400F's gaming performance to Intel's Core i5-13400F, which also lacks an iGPU. According to AMD's own benchmarking, both offer similar performance, with the Ryzen 5 8400F taking a slight edge in titles like Watch Dogs Legion, Red Dead Redemption 2, and a few other games. It's not clear what GPU AMD used to obtain these results, or what settings (presumably 1080p).
The last of slides shared to X/Twitter compares the Ryzen 7 8700F to Intel's Core i5-14400F in both gaming and various applications like Blender and WinRAR. This time, AMD shows a more substantial performance advantage for its own hardware, including bigger wins in games like War Thunder and The Division 2, and chunkier gains in creator and productivity applications.
What about pricing? An early listing on Amazon (that's no longer live has been archived via Wayback Machine) listed the Ryzen 7 8700F at $299.99, while it's believed the Ryzen 5 8400F will carry a $189.99 MSRP. We'll have to see if those price points stick. To put them into context, Intel's Core i5-14400F sells for $199.98 on Amazon, while the Core i5-13400F currently goes for $185.99 on Amazon. Both are sale prices, and both are cheaper (by around $100 and a just a few bucks, respectively).
