According to a leaked shipping manifest from X/Twitter user harkaze5719, AMD is close to releasing a new Ryzen 7000G "Phoenix" series APU for AM5 desktops.

The leak mentions several APUs that may be released in the future, the Ryzen 5 7500G (both regular and Pro configurations) and 7300G, all listed as 65-watt socket AM5 parts. The leak also mentions the upcoming 8000U series laptop APUs.

The new 7000G desktop APUs are expected to use the latest RDNA 3 architecture in combination with the Zen 4 CPU core and support DirectX 12 Ultimate.

However, if the current rumors prove true and AMD decides to adopt the smaller "Phoenix 2" platform, the APU will feature a relatively low core/thread count and up to four GPU compute units due to its limited die size likely.

If this proves to be the case, it is unlikely that these new APUs will offer a meaningful level of performance improvement over previous versions and could prove disappointing. We will have to see for ourselves once they are released, but based on what we have heard so far, the performance of these new APUs remains a question mark.

For reference, the Phoenix APUs that have formed the foundation of the best portable gaming PCs, from the ROG Ally to the Ayaneo Air 1S, feature 8 cores, 16 threads, and 12 RDNA 3 compute units, and are capable of adequate gaming performance at pure 1080p at pure 1080p.

The leak also mentions a number of new laptop APUs under the 8000 series naming scheme. These are likely to be the new "Hawk Point" series, which will take over from the current "Phoenix" series, and are more of a rebrand than the "Strix Point" chips that we have been coveting. These are listed as Ryzen 7 8840U, Ryzen 5 8540U (both regular and "Pro" versions), and Ryzen 3 8440U, all listed as 28W parts. These are likely to be a mix of Zen 2, Zen 3+, and Zen 4 architectures and use either the FP7 or FP7 revision 2 sockets already used in the current "Phoenix" series.

We've been waiting for a while to see what these new APUs will look like, and if this leak is anything to go by, it looks like we're getting pretty close to release. a genuinely decent performing APU from AMD would provide a budget gaming without the need for dedicated GPUs. systems, it could provide a solid platform for PC gaming and potentially push the price of entry into PC gaming to a level similar to that of consoles. However, with rumors persisting that performance may be limited, it will be interesting to see if adding the RDNA 3 to the mix can provide a more meaningful uplift than previous models.