Even though AMD officially released its all-new Zen 4 platform in late 2022, the company isn't done launching new variants to fill in some holes in its lineup. The company recently unveiled two new APUs in China, which are typically CPUs with integrated graphics, but these chips didn't have an iGPU, so we suppose we can just call them CPUs. Now it is being reported both chips will hit global retail availability soon, giving the company two new entrants in the budget DIY category for its AM5 platform.
AMD has already launched the Ryzen 7 8700F and the Ryzen 5 8400F in China. These are both Zen 4 CPUs, with the former sporting an eight-core, 16-thread design and the latter offering six cores and 12 threads. Both CPUs have similar specs to two existing chips that offer an integrated GPU, so they will essentially be lower-priced versions for folks who already own GPUs. Both CPUs are rated for 65W power consumption, so they won't require any extravagant cooling.
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Both chips bear the 8000-series designation, meaning they are Zen 4 chips being sold in 2024. The previous Zen 4 chips were labeled 7000-series, which indicates 2023 availability. Despite these chips being budget-friendly, the 8700F still offers a boost clock of 5GHz, while the 8400F can boost to 4.7GHz, so they should still perform quite well in a range of workloads. One big difference between the chips is the 8700F sports a built-in neural processing unit (NPU), while the 8400F does not. So, if you're into the whole AI thing, you might want to go with the 8700F.
Both chips are similar to previously launched APUs for Zen 4 on desktop, including the Ryzen 7 8700G and the Ryzen 5 8500G. The only difference for the 8700-series chips is the G version has a Radeon 780M iGPU and a 100MHz higher boost clock. The 8400F differs from the 8500G in that the latter offers a Radeon 740M iGPU and has a 300MHz higher boost clock.
Wccftech estimates the Ryzen 7 8700F will cost $299 and the 8400F $149 based on the versions with an iGPU. However, none of this has been confirmed with AMD yet. They do confirm that nowadays it is indeed possible to upgrade to AM5 without spending a ton of cash, however, even when factoring in the cost of a DDR5 memory kit.
