The most recent AMD AGESA suggests Ryzen 7000G “Phoenix” desktop APUs
With the Ryzen 7000G series, AMD is getting ready to introduce its first APUs for the Socket AM5 desktop platform. The firm does not classify the ordinary Ryzen 7000 series “Raphael” processors as APUs, despite the fact that it has standardized integrated graphics with the Ryzen 7000 series. According to AMD, APUs are processors with overclocked iGPUs suitable for entry-level PC gaming. AMD is using their 4 nm “Phoenix” monolithic silicon, the same technology that powers the Ryzen 7040 series mobile processors, for the Ryzen 7000G series, as has been anticipated for some time. Reous’ compilation of CPU support lists for the most recent AGESA SMUs (system management units), which mention support for “Raphael” as well as “Phoenix,” provided evidence that “Phoenix” was making its way to desktop computers. Another piece of evidence was a support website for the ASUS B650 motherboard listing a UEFI firmware update encapsulating 1.0.8.0, which refers to a “upcoming CPU.”
In contrast to “Raphael” and “Dragon Range,” “Phoenix” is a monolithic processor die constructed on the TSMC 4 nm foundry node. Its CPU has an 8-core/16-thread arrangement, the most recent “Zen 4” microarchitecture, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. The iGPU is the main draw in this setup; it is based on the RDNA3 graphics architecture, complies with DirectX 12 Ultimate feature requirements, and has 12 compute units totaling 768 stream processors. Contrary to “Raphael,” the “Phoenix” silicon is rumored to have a 24-lane, older PCI-Express Gen 4 root complex. As a result, you get a 4-lane chipset bus, a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 PEG slot, and one CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot that is only compatible with Gen 4 x4. A dual-channel (4 sub-channel) DDR5 memory controller called “Phoenix” is equipped with native support for DDR5-5600. Whether the Ryzen AI feature set from the Ryzen 7040 series mobile processors will be retained by the Ryzen 7000G desktop APUs is a significant unknown.
