AMD cuts Ryzen 8000G "Phoenix 2" features, limited to only 4 PCIe lanes for GPU and 2 lanes for SSD

AMD has announced its Ryzen 8000G AM5 desktop APU processors. The processors have been presented in two configurations: the 8700G/8600G based on Phoenix 1 dies and the 8500G/8300G based on Phoenix 2 dies.

It looks like the Phoenix 2-based Ryzen 8500G and 8300G will be limited in memory channels and PCIe lanes, which could be an issue even for a budget platform.

The new GIGABYTE B650E AORUS ELITE X AX ICE motherboard suggests that the Ryzen 8000G Phoenix 1 has eight PCIe 4.0 lanes and four of them for M.2 NVMe drives. Given that the new processors are based on Phoenix 1 architecture, they support dual-channel DDR5 memory, which in turn outperforms, based on the specs mentioned, the single-channel memory in the Phoenix 2 chips. And this is not the only aspect where Phoenix 2 is inferior to Phoenix 1 in terms of performance.

Processors on the Phoenix 2 architecture only support 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes for GPU and 2 similar lanes for storage devices.

Despite the mentioned limitations, AMD Ryzen 8000G APUs on Phoenix 2 are expected to see demand from budget systems. These processors don't offer mind-blowing performance, but they provide decent efficiency for their price; the four-core Ryzen 5 8500G will cost around $179.