AMD's upcoming Ryzen chips probably represent the hardware world's most awaited shake-up in recent times (and I do know I've been mentioning this non-stop, but please, do bear with me here). The thought that the underdog could finally present an actual alternative - at least performance-wise - to its Goliath of a rival - and thus introducing renewed competition in a bogged-down hardware segment and the democratization of high-quality processing cores - is simply too good to not gobble down like water given to a desert nomad. I, for one, hope that AMD can deliver, prompting a better competitive - and pricing - environment for all of us.

And it would seem that Intel is looking to staunch an eventual bleeding that AMD's Ryzen chips might instill to their CPU line-up, with its expected 4-core, 8-thread, 6-core 12-thread, and 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen processors, by shaking up its - now ancient - line-up of Core processors. Intel has already introduced some changes to its line with the release of Kaby Lake - with some Celeron processors carrying Hyper Threading, previously locked to their i3 processors, and the first unlocked-multiplier Core i3-7350K processor, but apparently the company feels that isn't enough for Ryzen's expected performance - enter the Core i7-7740K and the Core i5-7640K.

Intel's Core i3-7350K, the little dual-core that could, is going to be absent from the company's launch line-up, multiple sources have reported. Considering Intel's other expected, already pretty well-known parts and respective pricing which will be making up its Kaby Lake market launch, the absence of Intel's only "innovative" product (if you can really call an unlocked multiplier an innovation) surely presents itself as sad news for the extreme value-conscious consumer - at least if non-K overclocking of Intel's processors is, this time around, properly shut-down by the company as intended.

Expected to be priced at $175, the Core i3-7350K is expected to carry a base clock of 4 GHz, with 5 GHz on air being the expected OC potential of the chips. Apparently, Intel is delaying the launch of this part (as well as its entry-level Celeron and Pentium families of processors) by several weeks. This could be a way for Intel to prevent early cannibalization of its i5 7400 processors by a small chip that could, in the right scenario, provide much higher performance due to its 1 GHz extra base core clock speed (also being the only Core i3 desktop SKU to feature Turbo Boost, with a frequency of up to 4.2 GHz).