AMD Ryzen AI 5 435G APU breaks cover in early benchmarks — six-core Zen 5 chip goes head-to-head with the Ryzen 5 8600G for budget PC builders

AMD has already unveiled its latest Ryzen AI 400 desktop processors. These new Zen 5 chips are available exclusively to OEMs, but they still compete with today's best CPUs. Early benchmarks for the Ryzen AI 5 435G, shared by Gray, indicate that the Ryzen AI 400 series is on the verge of release and could shake up the budget desktop market.

The Ryzen AI 400 series (codenamed Gorgon Point) mirrors the winning formula of its mobile counterparts, bringing the same feature set to the desktop platform. These Zen 5 chips come equipped with RDNA 3.5 integrated graphics to improve integrated gaming performance. Gorgon Point SKUs come in both standard and Pro variants, making them suitable for a range of consumer and professional applications.

Gorgon Point tops out with eight Zen 5 cores, and an integrated Radeon 860M engine featuring eight compute units (CUs). AMD designed Gorgon Point with flexible TDP options of 35W and 65W to accommodate a range of system builds from compact desktops to more demanding professional systems.

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The Ryzen AI 5 435G is the entry-level SKU in the Gorgon Point lineup and features a familiar six-core, 12-thread configuration. The chip rivals the existing Ryzen 5 8600G (codenamed Phoenix), which has an identical setup but on the older Zen 4 cores. Although it has six cores, the Ryzen AI 5 435G has two Zen 5 cores and four Zen 5c cores. Likewise, the Ryzen 5 8600G leverages two Zen 4 cores and four Zen 4c cores.

AMD Ryzen AI 5 435G Specifications

The Ryzen 5 8600G has substantially higher clock speeds. Presumably this is due to the OEM focus for Gorgon Point. In any event, Zen 5's 16% IPC improvement over Zen 4 balances out the equation. When you have a significant architectural leap, for example, a Zen 5 chip with a 500 MHz lower clock speed can still outperform a Zen 4 chip.

There's a big difference between the Ryzen AI 5 435G and the Ryzen 5 8600G's graphics capabilities, too. Although the former is on the faster RDNA 3.5 graphics, the latter has double the CUs, so it's still faster despite the CUs coming from RDNA 3. In gaming, the Ryzen 5 8600G should have the upper hand. Perhaps the biggest upgrade on the Ryzen AI 5 435G is its beefed-up NPU, which delivers more than 3X the AI performance of the Ryzen 5 8600G.

Hardware detective Gray recently uncovered two Geekbench 6 submissions for the Ryzen AI 5 435G, giving us a taste of the Zen 5 chip’s real-world performance. Analyzing the top scores from both entries, the Ryzen AI 5 435G achieves scores of 2,620 points in the single-core test and 10,718 points in the multi-core test. For context, the Ryzen AI 5 435G outpaces the popular Ryzen 5 8600G (2,492 points and 10,857 points) by about 5% in single-core performance and is only marginally behind, approximately 1% slower, than the Ryzen 5 8600G in multi-core performance.

The narrow performance gap between the Ryzen AI 5 435G and Ryzen 5 8600G demonstrates the power efficiency Zen 5 brings to the table. However, it should be interesting to see the Ryzen AI 5 435G's full potential outside of a single benchmark. Luckily, we won't have to wait long, since Ryzen AI 400 desktop systems should start hitting the retail market in the second quarter of the year.

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