Unreleased AMD Ryzen 7 5700G chip listed on eBay for $500

An engineering sample of an unreleased AMD APU has been spotted on sale on eBay. Not only that, but it's brandishing some benchmarks, too, and impressive ones at that. Behold, the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G.

It's said to be an eight-core processor with up to 16 threads to play with, according to images scooped by Twitter user harukaze5719, which would have the Ryzen 7 5700G matching the Ryzen 7 4700G of the previous generation in core count. It appears to be listed as a Cezanne chip, however, which means that it is a match under the hood for the Ryzen 5000 mobile chips launched earlier this year on the Zen 3 architecture, rather than the Zen 2 architecture in the previous generation and some of the newer low-power chips.

All the benefits of Zen 3 in an APU, then. Which are plentiful, by the way. Plus a slightly higher boost clock at 4.5GHz and base clock at 3.7GHz, an increase of 100MHz on both counts to its 4000-series counterpart. Although as an engineering sample this could be subject to change.

The listing also oddly lists some overclocks possible with the chip, it reads: "Buyers' feedback: 1.425V boost to 4.7 GHz (depends on a high-end MB and your skills), 1.3V 4.6 GHz."

The seller is not sure what the TDP of the chip is but it's likely 65W, and configurable down to 45W if required.

It's not just the CPU you're getting with an AMD APU, however, it's graphics too. In this case, it's sure to be the AMD's semi-unbranded 'Radeon Graphics', which is really a slightly tweaked variant of the Vega architecture with eight cores.

Hopefully the 5000-series APUs differ from the 4000-series in its availability, though. The Ryzen 4000-series desktop APUs were OEM-only, meaning you wouldn't be able to pick one up off the shelf for a DIY build.

That's a bit of a shame. Not only were these desktop APUs previously great for gamers on a tight budget that might look to upgrade to a GPU down the line, they were superb for small-form-factor builds that actually could offer a decent 1080p gaming experience. Granted, those graphics aren't excellent by any means, but OEM-only we'll see almost nothing of the sort.

There's also one Cinebench R23 benchmark included with the listing, which shows the eight-core chip performance right where you might expect an eight-core Zen 3 processor to. That's rock-solid in terms of single-core performance versus Intel's 11th Gen lot and great multi-threaded performance.

An engineering sample like this will set you back $500 (down from $1000 just moments earlier) according to the sketchy eBay listing. Worth it? Probably not, it's not even got the graphics driver support necessary to get it working for the most part. But I suppose it's a fun, if almost certainly illegally obtained, piece of AMD engineering… 

The shipping chip should cost a lot less than that. The DIY-friendly Ryzen 5 3400G was $149 when it first launched. Although whatever the price ends up being it might being ephemeral anyways, as I'm still not convinced we'll see this one outside the OEM market.

That's not all the more reason to buy one right now, though. Again, legally shaky ground here.