AMD Zen to Feature Enthusiast Specific SKUs

As befitting a major release like Zen, AMD looks to be rearranging much of how their CPU lineup will look like.  Dubbed Summit Ridge, what we know so far is that the top end SKU will be an 8 core 16 thread CPU on the AM4 platform. Interestingly, it looks like AMD will be creating special enthusiasts SKUs targetted to the overclocking and performance segments of the market. These chips will likely be paired with the new X370 chipset on the AM4 platform with DDR4 and PCIe 3.0.

According to the report, AMD is planning on one such unit for the initial Summit Ridge releases. Set to use the top end 8 core variant, the special, enthusiast grade chip will feature special binning for OC headroom and higher than normal stock stocks. This won’t be unlike Intel which has pushed their K series stock clocks way higher than the rest of the lineup. Interestingly, just like Intel does now, the enthusiast grade chips won’t ship with a stock cooler. I suppose given their intended market, these won’t be necessary but I’m sure there will be those that buy an enthusiast grade chip and won’t overclock it.

One interesting note is that while enthusiast grade chips are nice, AMD currently has all their pure CPU chips unlocked. This means you could potentially get the same performance by buying a mid range unit and overclocking it yourself. Having superior stock clocks without having to mess around with overclocking would be nice for those that require the performance but otherwise aren’t interested in overclocking. It will be interesting to see AMD will be segregating their lineup with Zen and if we will start seeing locked pure CPUs on Zen. Of course, I expect the APU lineup to continue to have a mix of locked and unlocked units.