AMD's 50th Anniversary 2700X Comes Signed by Lisa Su
Though rumored for some days now, the distinguishing features of AMD's 50th-anniversary edition of the Ryzen 7 2700X have been hard to discern. It doesn't appear that this special CPU will have higher clock speeds like Intel's Core i7-8086K, which was just a higher clocked 8700K that was released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Intel's famous 8086 processor. Thankfully, we now have more information on just how this 2700X is special thanks to VideoCardz, a website known for its leaks for upcoming products.
VideoCardz published two high-resolution images of the $348 Ryzen 7 2700X's box art, which is very similar to the current orange and grey design, except it uses gold and black instead and also has "AMD 50" emblazoned across the top of the box where the Vega graphics designation would usually be for the 2200G and 2400G. While the packaging is very nice and looks premium, the anniversary-edition's real standout feature is on the CPU itself.
Every 50th anniversary 2700X seems to be getting not just the "AMD 50" logo, but also an engraving of the signature of AMD's current CEO, Dr. Lisa Su. Dr. Su has almost obtained a cult of personality from hardware fans thanks to her speeches, such as the keynote at CES last January, and her central role in coordinating AMD's most recent launches for Ryzen and Vega, the former of which has made AMD certainly relevant again. Avid AMD fans will likely appreciate this small touch, though whether or not this signature will improve performance more than RGB is debatable.
Nevertheless, AMD's special edition of the 2700X is likely to be important to processor collectors and AMD lovers. It will also likely be the last 12nm CPU (or at least the last in its class) AMD launches before Zen 2, which is expected to get a reveal at Computex.
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Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.