It’s August of 2024 and after months of hunting down the parts for GamesRadar+’s new AMD testing PC, I finally sit down to review the AMD Ryzen 5 8600G. Admittedly, it’s not a great time to be a modern gaming CPU. The headlines in the last four weeks have been bleak; Intel’s 13th and 14th Generation chips have been so suddenly volatile that they’ve cast the brand in an embarrassing light, and AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series has seen delays and some awkward-looking leaks, so as I begin my benchmarking, I’m a little scared to look at the screen.
The best CPUs for gaming are a pretty demanding upgrade at the moment because, for anyone who hasn’t made the jump to a DDR5-compatible system, it can mean a whole new motherboard and memory too. For that reason, you want peace of mind that whichever one you commit to will be worth the money and will be able to harness the power of other new-gen components.
