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AMD firmware bug plagues performance of new Ryzen 8700G & 8600G APUs
Your new APU isn't offering the performance you expected? This might be why...
Updated: Feb 2, 2024 11:56 am
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Latest benchmarks from popular YouTuber, Gamer Nexus, have revealed that AMD’s latest release, the 8000G series of APUs, has a huge firmware flaw that is resulting in reduced performance. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a firmware issue this year, with the newly launched MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super also struggling to hit pre launch performance thanks to a similar firmware bug.
Nexus revealed in the review video of the new APUs that the processor quickly throttles itself when working at peak performance. In the review’s rendering benchmark test, the throttled Ryzen 7 8700G offered up underwhelming performance, scoring 17.4 seconds in Blender. As you can see from the results below, they went on to benchmark the APU without the use of STAPM, and performance saw an impressive uptick.
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Both of the new Ryzen 8700G and 8600G APUs were affected by this issue, with the brand quickly announcing that a fix was being worked on.
Why STAPM could be affecting your APUs performance
This is due to AMD’s STAPM (Skin Temperature Aware Power Management) feature being incorrectly deployed in the processors. Designed to cut power usage in mobile devices to prevent overheating, it’s been included in the 8000G series’ software.
This has led to the chips massively throttling power draw quickly after hitting peak performance, seriously affecting their processing ability.
As an Advanced Processor Unit, the 8000G series combines both CPU and GPU functions, boasting impressive stats upon launch with a 5.1 Ghz max boost clock – as well as using the latest RDNA 4 architecture that’s also used in AMD RX GPUs.
While promising to be the most graphically powerful CPU on the market at launch, this bug seriously harms the 8000G’s claims to this title.
Although AMD has announced they will be releasing a patch for it soon, Gamers Nexus was able to stop the STAPM from launching in their review, effectively fixing the issue at hand.
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