The $359 Ryzen 7 5700G APU is an interesting prospect — essentially an AMD Renoir laptop processor with more power and thermal headroom under its new guise as a desktop CPU. It’s a tad cheaper than the entry-level Ryzen 5 5600X desktop processor and adds integrated graphics support, so once the discrete GPU is used, how does it compare to other AMD and Intel desktop CPUs in gaming? Just how good is its integrated graphics card? These are the questions we aim to answer in our Digital Foundry review of AMD’s top APUs.
So what exactly is an APU? This stands for Accelerated Processing Unit and basically means you get both CPU and GPU in one package. The benefit of this is that you can run your computer and even play games without a dedicated graphics card, a useful feature when graphics cards are in short supply and prices are skyrocketing.
The CPU here is a Zen 3 design, but more in line with the Ryzen 5000 series laptop The processor, codenamed Renoir. That means excluding two key features of Ryzen 5000 desktop CPUs, PCIe 4.0 support and a double-sized L3 cache (which AMD calls gaming cache). That’s not surprising, however, considering that AMD needs to find room for eight Zen 3 CPU cores and an 8CU RX Vega graphics engine within the same physical constraints as AMD’s regular Ryzen 5000 CPUs.
As you might expect, the Ryzen 7 5700G uses the same AM4 socket design as past Ryzen processors, so it will work with a variety of motherboards made in the past five years; just make sure the one you choose has HDMI and/or DisplayPort outputs , so you can actually connect your monitor. If you don’t have another AM4 CPU on hand, you may also want to choose a model with a “USB BIOS Flashback” feature that allows you to update the BIOS via a USB drive without the CPU installed; AMD’s support page has more information.
The APU comes with a Wraith Stealth CPU air cooler in the box, which keeps the 65W chip at reasonable noise levels. The 5700G is unlocked, so you can try overclocking if you want, but AMD’s auto-acceleration algorithm is very good at delivering most of the CPU’s potential performance without any clutter in the BIOS.
| CPU Design | Promote | according to | cache | TDP | Suggested retail price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 5950X | Zen 3 16C/32T | 4.9GHz | 3.4GHz | 72MB | 105W | $799 |
| Ryzen 5900X | Zen 3 12C/24T | 4.8GHz | 3.7GHz | 70MB | 105W | $549 |
| Ryzen 5800X | Zen 3 8C/16T | 4.7GHz | 3.8GHz | 36MB | 105W | $449 |
| Ryzen 5700G | Zen 3 8C/16T | 4.6GHz | 3.8GHz | 20MB | 65W | $359 |
| Ryzen 5600X | Zen 3 6C/12T | 4.6GHz | 3.7GHz | 35MB | 65W | $299 |
| Ryzen 5600G | Zen 3 6C/12T | 4.4GHz | 3.9GHz | 19MB | 65W | $259 |
Our tests will use our standard early 2021 CPU test bench, which includes a 240mm Eisbauer Aurora liquid cooler, a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo SSD from Box, a 1000W Corsair PSU from Infinite Computing, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, and 16GB DDR4- 3200 CL16 memory. We used a regular Asus Crosshair Hero 8 motherboard to test the 5700G with an RTX 2080 Ti, and switched to an MSI B550 Gaming Carbon WiFi motherboard to test the integrated graphics (as the Crosshair doesn’t have an HDMI output). Meanwhile, our Intel tests were conducted on an Asus Z590 Maximus Hero motherboard.
Let’s move on to the content creation test to see how these eight Zen 3 cores perform. We expect performance between the Ryzen 3700X and the “full-fat” Ryzen 5800X, with the latter ideally closer than the former.
In Cinebench R20, a synthetic test designed to replicate real-world workloads from the 3D rendering package Cinema4D, the 5700G was impressive. In terms of single-core performance, it’s only slightly behind the Ryzen 5600X by less than 30 points (4%), and significantly faster than the Ryzen 3000 processor, and even later XT designs. In terms of multi-core, the 5700G is more competitive, outperforming the six-core 5600X by nearly 900 points (25% faster), but trailing the 5800X by about 650 points (10% slower).
| CB R20 1T | CB R20 metric tons | HB h.264 | HB HEVC | HEVC power usage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 5950X | 650 | 10240 | 69.56fps | 29.82fps | 259W |
| Ryzen 9 5900X | 638 | 8564 | 60.49fps | 25.42fps | 219W |
| Ryzen 7 5800X | 625 | 6185 | 43.72fps | 19.41fps | 214W |
| Ryzen 7 5700G | 576 | 5533 | 38.46fps | 15.96fps | 148W |
| Ryzen 5 5600X | 597 | 4446 | 31.43fps | 14.35fps | 148W |
| Ryzen 9 3950X | 514 | 9249 | 64.73fps | 25.59 frames per second | 296W |
| Ryzen 9 3900XT | 538 | 7101 | 51.91fps | 20.49fps | 221W |
| Ryzen 9 3900X | 514 | 7032 | 51.80fps | 20.29 frames per second | 228W |
| Ryzen 7 3800XT | 540 | 5164 | 37.14fps | 15.83fps | 177W |
| Ryzen 7 3700X | 494 | 4730 | 35.05fps | 14.67fps | 152W |
| Ryzen 5 3600X | 490 | 3705 | 27.54fps | 11.81fps | 149W |
| Ryzen 3 3300X | 503 | 2577 | 18.89 frames per second | 8.25fps | 120W |
| Ryzen 3 3100 | 449 | 2328 | 17.32fps | 7.44fps | 118W |
| Ryzen 7 2700X | 408 | 3865 | 27.31fps | 10.04fps | 224W |
| Ryzen 5 2600 | 399 | 2810 | 20.39 frames per second | 7.09fps | 130W |
| Core i9 12900K | 760 | 10416 | 70.82fps | 29.26fps | 373W |
| Core i5 12600K | 716 | 6598 | 44.27fps | 19.99 frames per second | 223W |
| Core i9 11900K | 636 | 6209 | 42.92fps | 19.60fps | 390W |
| Core i5 11600K | 599 | 4328 | 31.00fps | 13.97 frames per second | 233W |
| Core i5 11400F | 538 | 3959 | 28.47fps | 12.87fps | 242W |
| Core i9 10900K | 545 | 6337 | 45.55fps | 19.43fps | 268W |
| Core i5 10600K | 493 | 3587 | 26.40fps | 11.84fps | 177W |
| Core i9 9900K | 520 | 5090 | 37.87fps | 16.22fps | 266W |
| Core i7 9700K | 486 | 3759 | 28.77fps | 13.12fps | 171W |
| Core i5 9600K | 450 | 2603 | 20.70fps | 9.46fps | 132W |
This suggests that we will see strong results in our video transcoding tests, in fact the 5700G is 22% faster than the 5600X. Margins halved to 11% in the HEVC test, but it’s still a good lead for the 5700G compared to the similarly priced 5600X. Both CPUs also consume the same amount of power with the GPU attached, although the 5700G clearly has the advantage of being able to run without the GPU to slightly reduce total system power. Compared to AMD’s popular previous-generation octa-core processor, the 3700X, the 5700G is 10 percent faster. Not a huge difference, but still a reasonable result for this class of APUs.
That’s promising stuff so far, so how does the 5700G perform in games when paired with an RTX 2080 Ti? Let’s take a look at eight of our favorite games – and a quick look at how RAM speed affects performance and how the 5700G runs as an all-around APU.
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G Analysis
