AMD announces 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs

AMD has officially taken the wraps off its 2nd Gen Ryzen processors, announcing four new SKUs that fit into price points between $199 and $329 excluding taxes.

There are no major architectural changes to speak of, but these are AMD’s first processors to use the new 12nm Global Foundries process, and all such chips will be referred to as having ‘Zen+’ architecture to differentiate them. You can expect largely similar specifications to first-generation parts but with higher clock speeds.

Starting at the top, we have the Ryzen 7 2700X, which will become the new flagship for the AM4 platform. It’s an eight-core, 16-thread (8c16t) part with a 20MB cache, a 105W TDP, and base and boost frequencies of 3.7GHz and 4.3GHz respectively. Note that this latter boost frequencies refers to the maximum boost you’ll see from a single core and is not an all-core boost rating. The Ryzen 7 2700X has an MSRP of $329 excluding tax (£299.99 including VAT here) and will ship with the new RGB-enabled Wraith Prism stock cooler.

The Ryzen 7 2700 serves as a lower power 8c16t part, dropping the TDP to 65W and the frequencies to 3.2GHz base and 4.1GHz maximum boost. It comes with the Wraith Spire cooler and is set to retail for $299 excluding taxes or £259.99 including VAT for the UK.

If you don’t need eight cores, AMD offers the 6c12t Ryzen 5 2600X, where cache is now dropped to 19MB. This 95W CPU has 3.6GHz base and 4.2GHz maximum boost frequencies, comes with the Wraith Spire cooler, and will retail for $229 excluding taxes or £209.99 including VAT in the UK. The Ryzen 5 2600, meanwhile, is the 65W six-core part. Frequencies here sit at 3.4GHz/3.9GHz, and this $199 excluding taxes CPU comes with the Wraith Stealth cooler. The UK price is £169.99 including VAT.

All 2nd Gen Ryzen chips are unlocked for overclocking and use the existing Socket AM4 and will be compatible (via a BIOS update) with all previous AM4 motherboards, giving users who jumped on Ryzen early an easy upgrade path. However, AMD is also launching the new AX470 chipset simultaneously, which is said to have an ‘improved power infrastructure’ to support higher clocks.

Pre-orders are open now, but as you can see in the unboxing video above, we’ve received both the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X for review, so we’d recommending waiting for the full review on April 19th.