That number could be the chip’s turbo speed. The supposed leaked launch lineup released over the weekend seemingly only referred to the base speed ranges between all 17 chips. However, the eight-core Ryzen processor sample on display during January’s CES 2017 tech convention had a base speed of 3.6GHz and a turbo speed of up to 3.9GHz, 200MHz higher than the sample used during the New Horizon demo in December.
According to reports, those new speeds were achieved through F3 stepping. That essentially describes the revision level of the chip, meaning the Ryzen chip went through a few changes on the lithographic level to hit those improved speeds. Making changes at that level of the chip’s design indicates that AMD made improvements to the design, squashed a few bugs, and so on.
That said, AMD reportedly wasn’t finished squeezing every ounce of performance from its Zen architecture in the Ryzen processors. During CES 2017, there were talks of another revision, aka F4 stepping, that was just finalized, offering a turbo clock speed of 4.0GHz. That’s faster than Intel’s $1,000 Core i7-6900K packing a boost speed of up to 3.7GHz.
What’s interesting is that the listed Ryzen processor uses a clock speed of 4.2GHz for only $295. That could be the rumored R7 1800X model we saw at the top of AMD’s leaked Ryzen roadmap, which will compete with Intel’s Core i7-6900K eight-core chip. There doesn’t appear to be a seventh-generation equivalent of the i7-6900K right now, although that will likely change later this year once AMD’s Ryzen CPU family arrives.
Just as a refresher, here are the i7-6900K specs to show what AMD’s high-end R7 1800X Ryzen processor will be competing with later this month:
| Process node: | 14nm |
| Cores: | 8 |
| Threads: | 16 |
| Base clock speed: | 3.2GHz |
| Turbo clock speed: | 3.7GHz |
| Cache: | 20MB |
| Max power usage: | 140 watts |
| Integrated graphics: | No |
| Maximum supported memory: | 128GB |
| Supported memory types: | DDR4 (2,133MHz and 2,400MHz) |
As seen in the leaked roadmap, AMD will supposedly offer five Ryzen R7 models with eight cores and 16 threads clocked between 3.0GHz and 3.6GHz. The other four models include the R7 Pro 1800, the R7 1700X, the R7 1700, and the R7 Pro 1700. The Ryzen lineup also consists of eight R5 midrange units and four R3 entry-level units.
It was originally believed that the Ryzen processors would finally hit the market on March 2, 2017. We expect to hear more details about the official launch within the next week or two, so stay tuned.
