Key Takeaways
- AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series CPUs are delayed to August due to quality concerns.
- Reportedly, this has nothing to do with the design, but rather a testing issue.
- The Ryzen 9950X is said to be the most powerful consumer processor in the world.
AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series Zen 5 processors will have to wait until around mid-August because an issue with the “packaged product testing process” could “lead to a small number of products on the market that don’t meet our quality standards,” a spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware. Writing separately on X, AMD senior vice president Jack Huynh said the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X chips will be available on August 8, followed by the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X on August 15. The company was aiming for a July 31 series launch.
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AMD has refused to reveal specific issues other than to say that no redesign was required. The packaging process for the Ryzen 9000 series is simpler than some chips, giving AMD higher yields but still known to be potentially vulnerable to issues such as material contamination. Whatever slipped through testing, the first batch of chips reached AMD’s partners before the problem was detected, and the company is recalling those units and replacing them with new ones. Some have reportedly reached end consumers ahead of their launch date.
The 9000 series is not only AMD’s latest generation, but also an opportunity to establish an advantage over its biggest rival, Intel. In particular, the 9950X is billed as “the world’s most powerful desktop consumer processor,” boasting 16 cores and a boost speed of up to 5.7GHz. Such chips should make AMD even more attractive to hardcore gamers and those who need high-end Windows workstations.
Are these tough times for the CPU industry?
Speaking of Intel, the company has been through its own troubles in recent years. In 2022, customers began complaining about instability issues with its 13th generation desktop chips. Reports continued for 14th generation models, but it was only this month that the company discovered the cause and announced a fix plan in August. Some chips may be beyond repair and will need to be replaced by Intel.
The whole industry faces a complicated situation: Die sizes are getting smaller and smaller, and overall chip efficiency is increasing, but manufacturers, especially Intel, are struggling to reliably keep up with that progress. At the same time, they’ve had to split their architectures into specialized tasks, such as “efficiency” cores that can reduce power consumption.
