AMD's new gaming CPUs don't require a graphics card and are rumored to be arriving sooner than expected

AMD's CPUs with integrated graphics - often called APUs, or accelerated processing units - are legendary, with the company having produced the fastest options around for years now. The likes of the Ryzen 5600G and Ryzen 8600G have provided the ability to build a tiny PC with just a CPU that can still play many modern games. Now AMD's back with its latest version, and it's rumored to be arriving very soon.

Specs for the new AMD CPUs aren't confirmed yet, but it's believed they'll be effectively just a desktop version of the company's current laptop CPU range, the Ryzen AI 400 series, which is itself just a slightly faster version of its AI 300 chips. While that may not sound too exciting, the GPU in those chips is still impressive, and I fully expect these will end up being among best gaming CPU choices for those wanting an ultra-compact PC.

The latest rumor regarding these desktop versions of the Ryzen AI 400 series is that they will make an official arrival "in the first half of 2026," according to a new leak by regular tech rumor source, Moore's Law is Dead (MLID). Posting on X, MLID stated that "I can confirm that #AMD Gorgon Point is currently planning to come to AM5 in the first half of 2026! In fact, it might even launch Q1."

MLID goes on to say that proof of this rumor is provided by a promotional video embedded in the post. All this video shows, though, is a close-up render of a CPU in a motherboard, with the CPU labelled "AMD Ryzen AI Pro."

The new chips will be able to drop into any AM5 motherboard, just like the company's other existing desktop CPUs, but whereas the likes of the Ryzen 7 9850X3D requires the use of a separate graphics card, the Ryzen AI 400 series houses its own GPU. It's likely that not all variants of these chips will have particularly powerful GPUs, but instead have just enough power to run a Windows desktop, and these will be useful for ultra-compact workstation PC, for instance.

However, if these chips do follow the same specs as the company's latest laptop CPUs, they could employ GPUs with as many as 16 compute units, which is about half as many as in the RX 7600 graphics card, but 50% more than in AMD's current fastest APU, the 8700G, and twice as many as in its second-fastest APU, the 8600G.

These chips are also expected to contain a powerful 60 TOPS NPU for AI workloads, which would make these the first socketed desktop CPUs (i.e. CPUs that are user-swappable) that are CoPilot+ capable. As for CPU power, the chips are expected to house up to 12 cores.

It remains to be seen just what specs these new AMD CPUs will have, and what their release date might be, but for an indication of the sort of performance these CPUs can deliver, you can check out our AMD Ryzen 5 8600G review, which in theory should be a chip about half as fast as these upcoming ones.