It's AMD's 50th anniversary in less than a week. 50 years of competitive hardware development in a cutthroat industry, much like last year saw Intel reach its 40 year milestone. Just like Intel's anniversary too, where it released a special edition of its top tier 8700K CPU, AMD will be releasing special anniversary editions of its top tier hardware, namely its 2700X CPU and its Radeon VII graphics card.
Hinted at just a few weeks ago and now confirmed via listings on a retailer spotted by Videocardz, the new editions of these high-end components will have unique packaging, with gold accents to celebrate AMD's five decades of operation. It also looks from the Radeon VII's box that it will come with a unique red shroud rather than the brushed silver look of the standard edition of the card.
We would assume that like Intel's 8086 CPU, which was in-fact a binned 8700K, these two components will be binned too, to offer greater performance than they might typically do. With the 2700X typically reaching 4.3GHz when boosted, we wouldn't be surprised if this version could hit 4.5GHz when pushed. The Radeon VII will likely see a small increase in its boost clock, perhaps 1,850MHz — a 100 MHz increase over stock. A 2GHz version would be more impressive and a nice round number to aim for, but that seems like too much of an ask for a part that was already pushing its cooling system to the extremes.
Of some surprise is the cost of these parts. While we don't know the Radeon VII's price tag just yet, the 50th Anniversary Edition of the 2700X is priced at $340 with a cooler. That's $40 less than the standard 2700X is valued on the same site.
It's not clear if this price drop will carry over to retailers with more favorable pricing,
Regardless, AMD Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Navi GPUs are just around the corner, so buying either of these parts is only really advisable for collectors.