We examine an early sample. Historically speaking, the introduction of a new CPU architecture from either Intel or AMD has usually been preceded by fervent speculation, genuine excitement and bated breath. I remember with fondness - and also showing my advanced years - the move from the 486 to Pentium. Then later, after the misfiring Pentium 4 was taken to task by a slew of AMD Athlons and subsequently put to bed, the wholly impressive Sandy Bridge architecture arrived on the scene almost six years ago.

The mainstream and even premium space of the desktop CPU market has stagnated since then. Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake have offered iterative improvements and, truth be told, were purposely designed with the mobile market in mind. On the other end of the scale, ever-denser CPUs and hideous levels of cache have kept the same-architecture Xeons out of everyman's reach. AMD, meanwhile, hasn't reignited the volume desktop space with anything approaching the hard-hitting Athlon of yesteryear.