AMD Phoenix Brings AI to The Desktop

AMD’s Ryzen 8000G series includes the first x86 desktop PC processors to integrate a dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) engine, opening a new frontier in the push to expand AI capability to computing platforms.

Two of the four 8000G models—the Ryzen 7 8700G and the Ryzen 5 8600G—feature AMD’s dedicated AI neural processing unit (NPU), tracking the path it blazed last year for notebook PCs with its Ryzen Pro 7040 series processors and forthcoming Ryzen 8040 series.

AMD may have been first to market in terms of x86 processors, but AI features are rapidly becoming standard. Intel followed in 2023, rolling out its Core Ultra (codenamed Meteor Lake) notebook processors with integrated AI accelerators. Apple features AI acceleration in its M series Mac processors, and Qualcomm does the same in its Arm-based Windows PC chips such as the forthcoming Snapdragon X Elite.

Following its usual pattern, AMD reused the Phoenix design unveiled last year for its 7040 series laptop processors in its initial 2024 desktop offerings. The 8000G series, which replaces the previous-generation 7000 series desktop processors, are fabricated in 4 nm by TSMC and feature four to eight Zen 4 CPU cores, depending on the model.

New for this desktop generation, AMD has dramatically improved the integrated graphics with Radeon GPUs based on the RDNA3 architecture, promising to lower the price threshold of entry-level gaming PCs. The chips are available now, priced between $179 and $329.