Two new processors are joining the worldwide AMD Ryzen stable in May 2024, with Amazon just inadvertently revealing the AMD Ryzen 7 8700F release date and price in the US. After being released in China a few weeks ago, this CPU, along with the new AMD Ryzen 5 8400F, is now set to launch internationally, but there’s one puzzling aspect about this CPU launch, and that’s the price.
The new CPUs are based on the AMD Zen 4 CPU architecture, and don’t feature an integrated Radeon GPU – the Ryzen 7 8700F is basically a Ryzen 7 8700G, but with the GPU disabled. When we tested its sibling in our Ryzen 5 8600G review, we found that the GPU was surprisingly powerful, earning it a place on our best gaming CPU guide. Without this GPU, you’d expect the CPU to have a very competitive price, but that’s apparently not the case.
According to Amazon, the Ryzen 7 8700F price is $299.99, and the release date is 14 May, 2024. That’s a problem, as you can currently buy the Ryzen 7 7700X for just $286.97 now from Amazon, and it’s a much more powerful CPU. In order to squeeze the GPU and AI hardware into the Ryzen 7 8700G, AMD had to cut down the specs of the CPU, and those specs remain cut down, even when the GPU is disabled.
That means the Ryzen 7 8700F only has 16MB of L3 cache, for example, compared with 32MB on the Ryzen 7 7700X. It also means the Ryzen 7 8700F boost clock is only 5GHz, compared with 5.4GHz on the 7700X – this is also 100MHz slower than the Ryzen 7 8700G’s 5.1GHz boost clock.
Not only that, but the Ryzen 7 8700F only provides you with 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes for GPU and SSD hardware, whereas the 7700X gives you 24 lanes that support the latest PCIe 5.0 standard. You won’t be able to run one of the best gaming SSDs, such as the PCIe 5.0 Crucial T705, at full speed if you use the Ryzen 7 8700F. On the plus side, at least the Ryzen 7 8700F still has AMD’s AI hardware enabled (which you won’t find on the 7700X), but that’s of no use for gaming right now.
Amazon hasn’t revealed the price of the six-core Ryzen 5 8400F yet, but a post by X (Twitter) leaker momomo_us suggests this new CPU will come in at $189.99. Again, this is more expensive than the Ryzen 5 7600 at Amazon right now, and this is a much more powerful CPU, especially when it comes to gaming.
The Ryzen 5 8400F has a similar core CPU spec to the Ryzen 5 8600G, but with a much slower boost clock of 4.7GHz, compared to 5GHz on the 8600G. Unlike the Ryzen 7 8700F, it also doesn’t have the AI hardware enabled either. If you want to buy a cheap AMD six-core CPU, you’ll be much better off buying the Ryzen 5 7600, which has more L3 cache and a much higher boost clock of 5.1GHz.
Basically, if this pricing is right, and it looks as though it is, given that Amazon is now taking pre-orders, AMD has messed it up. There was an opportunity to give people some extra choice, with two new cut-price Ryzen CPUs without integrated graphics, but at these prices, gamers would be much better off buying the cheaper Ryzen 5 7600 or Ryzen 7 7700X instead.
Of course, if you really want to maximize your gaming CPU performance, your best option is to buy a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which stormed our gaming benchmarks thanks to its huge stack of extra L3 cache.