AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G review: integrated graphics for the win

We've run our CPU benchmarks this time around at 1080p and 1440p, as we rarely see prominent differences at 4K. (There's an argument for testing at 720p to make these deltas even more visible, but even mainstream PC gaming has long since moved onto 1080p.) We're using an Asus RTX 3090 Strix OC graphics card and DDR5-6000 CL30 memory for these results.

Our third page is all about FPS fps, with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The latter two are RT-enabled benchmarks, as creating the BVH structure for ray tracing actually has a significant CPU impact.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Counter-Strike remains the gold standard for competitive FPS, and (running in its Global Offensive legacy branch) is unique amongst our benchmark suite as a DX9 title typically played at hundreds of frames per second. However, competitive-minded players still value high-end CPUs, as guaranteeing a strong and stable frame-rate up to and beyond the refresh rate of their monitors provides a critical boost to responsiveness. As monitors get faster - up to 540Hz these days - CPU requirements continue to climb.

The 8700G and 8600G acquit themselves very nicely in CS:GO, with both chips turning in results just shy of 290fps average - admittedly with worst one percent scores of "just" 157fps. That's more than enough to take advantage of a high refresh rate monitor at least, and some quick testing in CS2 reveals results in line with other Ryzen 7000 CPUs - around the same speed or faster than CS:GO at low settings, or around 20 percent lower with high settings. In general then, the 8700G and 8600G won't hold you back in CS:GO when paired with a decent discrete GPU.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is an RT-only variant of the vanilla game, run here with DLSS engaged to uncouple the GPU and push the strain onto the CPU as much as possible. The test scene we're using comes from the very beginning of The Volga level, with Artyom and Anna discussing their hopes for the future before running into a hostile camp.

Metro Exodus EE is easy to benchmark but often difficult to explain, with lower core-count CPUs outperforming their higher-end counterparts and other occasional weirdness. So it goes with the 8600G, which outperforms the 8700G by around seven percent. There's still a 10 percent gap to the Ryzen 5 7500F, which is amongst the biggest we've seen between Ryzen 7000 and 8000.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest game in the Call of Duty series to feature ray tracing - despite the launch of three COD titles in the interim. These extra calculations add on a nice bit of CPU load that we can use to differentiate different models, hence the game's inclusion in these benchmarks.

Both the 8700G and 8600G turn in near-identical performance here, with ~128fps averages and ~74fps lowest one percent scores. That places the two APUs within spitting distance of the 7500F, 7600 and 7600X, with the two X3D CPUs being around 25 percent faster. So far, I'd have to say that the 8700G and 8600G are looking pretty potent if you need powerful onboard graphics and/or they're a fair bit cheaper than the Ryzen 7600/7600X.

We conclude our gaming tests on the next page, where we take on Cyberpunk 2077 and two new editions of Digital Foundry favourites: Far Cry 6 and Crysis 3 Remastered.

AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G analysis

• Introduction, test rig and content creation benchmarks
• iGPU gaming benchmarks: F1 23, CS:GO, Far Cry 6, Cyberpunk 2077
• Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, Hitman 3, Ashes of the Singularity
• Gaming benchmarks: Counter-Strike: GO, Metro Exodus EE, Black Ops Cold War [this page]
• Gaming benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 6, Crysis 3 Remastered
• AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G: the Digital Foundry verdict