On April 19th, AMD officially launched their second generation Zen based processors codenamed "Pinnacle Ridge" as the successor to the popular "Summit Ridge" first generation. This release shouldn't be confused with the planned Zen 2, but rather the Zen+ iteration of improvements from AMD.  The new processors come on an improved node process of 12nm and provide an increase in IPC by an advertised 3%, along with improved memory latency, and higher frequency speeds to provide an uplift in overall performance.

If you are unfamiliar with the Ryzen family (excluding APUs), they come in three variations: R7 (8-Core 16-Thread), R5 (6-Core 12-Thread, 4-Core 8-Thread) and R3 (4 Core 4 Thread). The offerings from the first generation to the second generation have not changed in this respect and should feel familiar. We have included a specs breakdown chart below for easy reading and expectations of these new models.

As you can tell by the naming, Ryzen continues its direct competition with the i3, i5 and i7 series from Intel.  This generation has no changes except the exclusion of a Ryzen 7 2800X model.  Seeing how the first generation Ryzen 7 1700 and 1700X provided much better value than the expensive 1800X, it's not surprising it's been skipped this generation.

It should be noted that all of these chips will work with AM4 motherboards from the previous generation of Ryzen, assuming you have the latest BIOS updates. If buying new, several of the 3xx series motherboards will come with a sticker indicating their readiness for these new processors.  If you purchase from old stock, you will need a boot-kit (AMD provided APU for booting and BIOS flashing).  Details on AMD provided boot kits can be located here (https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/2Gen-Ryzen-AM4-System-Bo...).

With the advancements in XFR (boost) technology, I'm excited to see how these chips stack against Intel's offering for stock performance.  As it stood previously, the first generation provided very similar gaming results when paired with fast DDR4 memory.  This generation should provide parity performance at stock speeds while still providing a superior stock cooler and additional cores/threads.

Here are the stock coolers (yes, including RGB) that will be shipping with the Pinnacle Ridge line of processors.

If you are interested in the new Ryzen 2700X, 2700, 2600X, 2600 series chips, we have provided some direct Amazon links below to help and support our content and efforts.