AMD’s Ryzen processors made a huge splash in the market last year, offering stiff competition to the existing Intel line up. Despite Intel’s continued efforts, Ryzen proved to be a game changer. And now, the fresh set of rumors indicates that AMD is looking to increase their foothold in the market with their next generation of AMD Ryzen processors codenamed “Pinnacle Ridge.”
We’ve already had our fair share of rumors regarding AMD’s “Pinnacle Ridge” CPUs. However now, we have more clarity as to when the company is planning to launch its 2nd generation Ryzen processors. According to Japanese retailers, AMD is expected to launch Ryzen 2000-series processors in March 2018 along with two 400-series companion chipsets.
The new chipsets namely AMD X470 (top-tier) and AMD B450 (mid-range) are said to feature PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. The new processors are said to have increased clocked speeds, thanks to the new 12nm manufacturing process.
That being said, the new AMD Ryzen 2 “Pinnacle Ridge” processors will be built in the existing socket AM4 package, and hence they should have no compatibility issues with existing socket AM4 motherboards, despite the incoming chipsets. This also means that existing Ryzen processors will work just fine on the future motherboards based on AMD 400-series chipsets as well.
We’re still a couple of months away from the expected launch date, and more details are likely to spill out before then. Meanwhile, Intel is also preparing new CPUs of its own based on its long-anticipated 10nm Cannon Lake architecture.
