Bristol Ridge's older technology paired with the AM4 chipset are of vital importance for AMD because this platform will become the base for the company to launch the flagship processor Zen.

According to Seeking Alpha, Bristol Ridge provides a productive performance similar to Intel Core i5 6500. In terms of graphics, AMD's Bristol Ridge offers up to 99 percent higher performance.

AMD's Bristol Ridge processors are already shipping now in Lenovo and HP systems. While the initial launch targets system integrators and big system OEMs, "Product-In-Box" units for self-build systems will come by the end of the year for users who plan to build their own systems. The new AMD AM4 socket provides a direct upgrade path.

According to AnandTech, the seventh generation Bristol Ridge line launched by AMD over the last two weeks includes seven APUs and one CPU. They all are based on a high-frequency A12 part featuring seventh generation Excavator v2 microarchitecture.

Desktop Bristol Ridge parts are all built on the Bristol Ridge notebook parts launched by Advanced Micro Devices earlier in the year. The only one CPU in the Bristol Ridge line, the Athlon X4 845, comes with no integrated graphics but offers DDR3 support.

AMD was able to tweak the Excavator microarchitecture by using the updated 28 nm process from TSM. This allowed the company to create APUs for desktops using a similar design. The AMD mainstream processors will now reach a maximum of 65 W in their official thermal design power and all the APUs launched will support DDR4-2400 at JEDEC sub-timings.

This is a critical landmark in the company's endeavor to gain a bigger market share and turn around their financial fortunes. AMD's strategy aims to use Bristol Ridge processors as the means by which the company will establish its AM4 platform in mainstream designs. The same AM4 socket can later serve as the base platform for Summit Ridge with the flagship Zen cores.