AMD Ryzen 7 2700X And Radeon VII 50th Anniversary Editions Tipped For April 29th Debut
AMD is getting a slight jump on its 50th anniversary by prepping a couple of special edition parts for release just ahead of the big day. If the latest leak proves real, then on Monday, April 29, AMD will unveil 50th anniversary editions of its Zen-based Ryzen 7 2700X processor and Vega-based Radeon VII graphics card, both in special packaging to commemorate the occasion.
We have already seen references to the anniversary edition Ryzen 7 2700X, which showed up in a retail listing last week. At the time, however, there was no mention of there also being a special version of the Radeon VII.
We still do not have a lot of details to go on, though it is a reasonable bet that these will be available in limited quantities. Intel did the same thing in celebration of 40 years of x86 computing, with its special edition Core i7-8086K—there were only 50,000 of them made available. They also featured faster clocks than the top mainstream dog at the time, the Core i7-8700K.
Likewise, we would not be surprised if the Ryzen 7 2700X 50th anniversary edition chip debut at faster clockspeeds than the regular Ryzen 7 2700X. For reference, the regular chip sports 8 cores and 16 threads with a 3.7GHz base clock and 4.3GHz boost clock, along with 16MB of L2 cache. We don't know that the anniversary edition actually will be faster, but it would make sense. How much faster, though, depends on how aggressively binned they end up being—best case scenario is probably a 5GHz boost clock out of the box (fingers crossed).
We might also see something similar with the Radeon VII. Based on a Vega 20 GPU, the Radeon VII has 3,840 stream processors, 240 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 16GB of HBM2 memory. Reference specs call for a 1,400MHz base clock and 1,750MHz boost clock.
Alternatively, these anniversary edition parts could be all about the packaging, both in terms of the retail box and the cooling solutions for each. Rather than push things with faster clocks, they may simply debut with special packaging, collectible stickers, and fancier aesthetics. We're not sure how well that would be received, though, considering these will undoubtedly sell for a premium over the regular parts.
We'll find out on Monday, which is two days ahead of AMD's official 50-year anniversary.
