AMD have been quite busy releasing new CPUs in recent years, with FOUR new microarchitecture launches in the last four years alone. But what’s the real difference between CPUs like the Ryzen 7000 and 8000 series? And should you buy the new 9000 series Zen5 line-up, or wait for the “enhanced” 10000 series?
I answer this questions and more in this video, including discussing the good and bad points to the “upgraded” 6000, 8000 and 10000 Ryzen series launches that introduced a range of new APUs to the market.
If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.
Video Transcript And Guide
Hey everyone, I’m fairly experienced at building computers, but it seems like every time I blink, AMD brings out a new series of CPUs. For example in 2020 they released the 5000 series, and then 2 years later they rolled out the 6000 series – but also the 7000 series. AMD also has an 8000 series of CPUs that they launched in 2024. But what’s the difference? And if you’re looking to build a new PC, which CPU series should you be looking at? I’ll answer these questions and more in this video.
AMD’s “Intel Strategy”
Designing a CPU is hard. You can’t just glue some silicon and wires together and hope for the best. It takes years and many millions of dollars for Intel and AMD to design and then produce their newest CPUs, and every time their bosses get on stage and launch a new “set” of CPUs, they are actually launching a new microarchitecture of CPU. Essentially, the chip makers are constantly reviewing where all the circuits and components will go within a CPU chip so that the CPU can perform as best as possible. This is NOT a straightforward process and it’s why a massive multi-billion dollar company can spend many years designing a new CPU launch, only to see it delayed at the last minute (like the 9000 series Ryzen Zen5 launch) or have various instability issues that in some cases just can’t be fixed (I’m looking at you, Intel).
Because of how complex this can all be, in 2007 Intel launched a new way of designing and launching their CPUs – which they called the Tick-tock strategy. No they weren’t going to start dancing to silly 45 seconds videos on social media: this was the idea of doing a “big” CPU launch every few years, and then refining that microarchitecture so that the chip maker could squeeze as much efficiency (and profit) out of the CPUs as possible.
And that’s basically what AMD have been doing with their Ryzen CPUs: they launched the “Zen1” 1000 series in 2017 – which is when I bought the awesome 1700 chip which blew my mind at the time.
And then the following year they introduced Zen+ with the 2000 series launch. Equally the Zen2 3000 series came out in 2019, and then the 4000 series came out the following year in 2020 – which is when Zen3 (the 5000 series) also got released. AMD DID then release a 6000 series “upgrade” in 2022, but this was a smaller launch and upgrade than some of the other “tick tock” enhancement launches in my opinion, although I’ll discuss that point shortly.
Finally, AMD released the new Zen4 series in 2022 – this was AMD’s first CPU line-up that supported DDR5. All previous CPUs were stuck with DDR4 support. This new Zen4 (or 7000) series is pretty awesome though – I have the Ryzen 7600 in my Homelab NAS build and it does a great job. However the Zen4 “mini-upgrade” then came out in 2024, with the 8000 series launch – and then in mid-2024, the new 9000 series came out. And that’s great, but with FOUR entire microarchitecture launches in the last FOUR years alone, you could be forgiven for being confused. Which should you buy?
Why The 6000, 8000 (and 10000?) Series Are Flawed
You might think that the decision is obvious – if the 5000, 7000 and 9000 series are AMD’s “first attempt” at a new microarchitecture, surely you should WAIT and buy the “more efficient” tweaked chips like the 6000 and 8000 series, right? Well, not really. It ‘kinda depends what you’re doing with them, I guess.
Often the “tweaked” CPUs – like the Ryzen 6800U and the Ryzen 8500G – ARE pretty good for budget gaming builds, home theater PCs and laptops – especially because they are often much more power efficient than the previous-gen chips. They also have integrated graphics, meaning that they are sometimes known as “APUs” – accelerated processing units, which are kinda a mix of CPUs and GPUs. That means that you can POTENTIALLY power entire games just from your CPU (well, APU) – without needing to buy a separate graphics card. When launching the Ryzen 8600G chip earlier this year, AMD were eager to point out that it can achieve fairly good gaming performance… which was sort of accurate if you play at a lower resolution. For 1080p and 720p gaming, you could get half decent frame rates – entirely from your CPU. And that’s pretty amazing considering that integrated graphics has always been considered more of a gimmick than anything else.
There ARE some downsides though. Even though the 8600g is a mid-range chip, it doesn’t get AMAZING gaming performance – it often struggles to hit 30fps at medium graphical settings (when playing at full HD). If you wanted to play at a higher resolution, or simply to achieve smoother frame rates, you’ll probably want to buy a separate graphics card. And then you may as well buy a CPU from the previous 7000 series, such as the 7600, because that is a more powerful processing chip than the 8600g. It frequently gets better gaming performance when both chips are paired with a separate graphics card, for example.
That might seem confusing because I keep saying that the “next” microarchitecture launch (like the 8000 series) makes a range of improvements compared to the previous series. HOWEVER here’s a key point: often the “enhanced” CPUs are made more power efficient, but at the cost of some processing power. The 6000, 8000 and probably the 10000 series of CPUs are usually not as good pure processing workhouses as the previous gen. That’s why I went with a Ryzen 7600 in my Homelab NAS, and a 5900X in my workstation PC: I care more about processing power than minor efficiency tweaks.
Which AMD Ryzen Series I Prefer
The other big flaw of SOME “enhanced” CPUs is that they come with less PCIe lanes. For example the Ryzen 8500G only supports x4 PCIe lanes for the main graphics card slot, which basically means that any separate graphics card will run at a quarter of the bandwidth of other cards. The M.2 NVMe slot will also run at just x2 speeds, limiting it to just 4000 Megabits per second speeds. As a result, if you were building your own gaming PC and “got a bargain” on an 8500g, you might want to return it because it limits things a bit too much. Even the 8600g has similar limits, offering just x8 lanes for the main GPU slot.
And that’s the main thing to know here. YES it is good that AMD are reviewing their CPU microarchitectures and squeezing extra efficiency and features (like integrated graphics and “AI features”) from their tweaked CPU line-ups, but if you wanted a workstation PC OR you intended on buying a graphics card anyway, you can probably stick to the “main” 5000, 7000 and 9000 series launches.
If you wanted to know more about PCIe lanes and discrete GPUs, you can check out this separate video that discusses this topic in a lot more detail.
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