Nov 24, 2016 03:27 PM EST By Andrea Tee, UniversityHerald Reporter

AMD is expected to launch its Zen-based Summit Ridge desktop processors on Jan. 17, 2017.

The pieces of information about AMD's upcoming 8 Core/16 Thread CPU on recent months are hinted through an image and letter from one of AMD's Chinese partners, MAXSUN, which claimed that the first Zen chips will be the part of AMD's SR7.

For Zen, AMD will apparently be adopting an SR3, SR5 and SR7 naming scheme, similar to Intel's i3, i5 and i7 lineup which AMD suggested to be the first Zen components to be released.

According to HNGN, the upcoming Zen processors will sport eight physical cores and 16 virtual threads capable of delivering performance at par with Intel's Core i7-6850K processor, as the Summit Ridge processors have achieve scores that are identical to the Intel processor.

Rumors suggest that AMD will have special overclocking variants for the Zen processors. Under its hood, AMD has optimized the clock speeds for Summit Ridge chips around 3.15-3.30 GHz base and 3.5 GHz boost on FinFET process, according to LegitReviews.

AMD SR7 processors are also tagged as decent overclockers through its clocking speed of 4.2 GHz that can be boosted by a CPU cooler and LN2 cooling up to 5 GHz.

The company will also be releasing A320, B350 and X370 motherboard chipsets for the AM4 platform, with X370 being the flagship chipset for AM4 that supports enhanced overclocking and has two x16 motherboard slots for AMD CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU configurations.

As part of AMD's SR7 range, the Zen processors will carry a price tag between $200 and $300 a piece, while their special overclocking variants should be priced higher than $500.

AMD has already selected Maxsun as a key partner for shipping high-performance AM4 motherboards in the mainland China region. Several other manufacturers are also readying new, high-end boards to support the upcoming Summit Ridge processors.

The second range of lower-end Zen chipsets and motherboards are expected to be revealed in March, with rumors of SR5 and SR3 Zen chips being the first to be introduced.

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