Spotted a short while back, AMD’s intriguing Ryzen 5 7500F has broken review cover in the Asia region. Interesting insofar it’s the first Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 Series desktop chip bereft of integrated RDNA 2 graphics, the aggressive $179 retail price and 6C12T capability make it a prime candidate to go up against the latest rival Intel Core i5 processors.
Released Saturday, July 22, Ryzen 5 7500F is Zen 4 with a twist. The strict CPU portion is entirely expected, running at 3.7GHz base and up to 5.0GHz boost on six cores and 12 threads. 32MB of L3 cache is present and correct, too, and AMD provides the reasonable Wraith Stealth cooler in the box. Though seemingly available in China first, there’s no indication AMD will restrict it to this region.
The main difference between this processor and a raft of other Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs is the lack of integrated graphics present within the I/O die. Confirmed by looking at detailed specifications, AMD points out that a ‘Discrete Graphics Card [is] Required.’ That’s no great shakes as most users, we reckon, run with a discrete card anyway. Furthermore, not having to bother screening for a working iGPU enables AMD to salvage dies that perhaps don’t make the necessary grade for other chips.
On paper, Ryzen 5 7500F’s CPU oomph is only slightly lower than in-market $229 Ryzen 5 7600 – the latter runs at 100MHz higher on both base and boost clocks, so expect near-identical benchmark performance on these 65W models.
Multiple Chinese websites have gotten their hands on Ryzen 5 7500F and confirm what we believe. Expreview, for example, finds the latest Ryzen to be about the same speed as competitor Intel Core i5-13490F. Quaserzone, on the other hand, can’t readily separate the new chip from Ryzen 5 7600 in CPU-centric tests, but says it achieves 97.4 per cent of that processor’s performance across 10 games tested at 1080p using a GeForce RTX 4090. Gaming numbers look promising against a host of similar Intel chips, as well.
Ryzen 5 7500F has the makings of a solid CPU as the foundation of a quality gaming build. Pair with an inexpensive A620 motherboard, cheap-as-chips DDR5 and you’ll spend little more than £300, though it’s a shame, at the time of writing, Ryzen 5 7500F isn’t included the impressive Starfield promotion.
