The launch of AMDs Ryzen 1st Gen chips went down a storm with the PC market last year, but outright clock speeds were somewhat lacking when compared to the blue corner. That’s where the Ryzen 5 2600X hopes to make up some ground, with a boost clock of 4.2GHz and base clocks of 3.6GHz.

The new Zen+, codenamed “Pinnacle Ridge”, utilises the new 12nm process from GLOBALFOUNDRIES offering slightly better transistor density and performance but it’s nothing revolutionary. Architectural differences aren’t huge over the previous Zen, but we do see focus placed on improving latency and memory speeds – these differences should translate directly into overall system improvements due to Zen’s reliance on AMD’s Infinity Fabric (The internal communication system used within the CPU die).