Report suggests AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 CPUs aren’t selling well at all – but Intel shouldn’t get too excited yet

AMD’s new Ryzen 9700X and 9600X processors aren’t selling well according to a new nugget of information – though we need to be careful around drawing any conclusions too soon.

As you’ll likely recall, these are the first Zen 5 (Ryzen 9000) processors to go on sale from AMD, and they hit the shelves last week. Wccftech reports that according to TechEpiphany’s figures – a source who regularly supplies stats on CPU sales from a major German retailer, MindFactory, on X – there were only a handful of Ryzen 9000 chips sold in their launch week.

We’re told that only 30 units of the Ryzen 7 9700X processor were shifted, and even fewer for the Ryzen 5 9600X which only accrued sales of 20 units. In total, 50 processors sold in the opening week is a pretty weak performance for the biggest retailer in Germany.

However, that’s the big caveat: this is just a single source, one retailer, and we absolutely can’t draw any conclusions as to overall sales for these two new Zen 5 chips.

What this is, however, is a worrying hint for AMD that the reception for the Ryzen 9700X and 9600X has been lukewarm – and what backs that up is some online sentiment that we’ve picked up on the likes of Reddit and other forums.

Analysis: Potential headwinds for AMD

So, what might be the problem here (with the emphasis on the word might)? Shouldn’t new Ryzen 9000 processors be flying off the shelves, given Intel’s current woes with instability pertaining to its current-gen (and last-gen) CPUs, plus the fact that Team Red has pitched Zen 5 a bit more affordably than its predecessors?

Those factors are certainly in AMD’s favor, but the problem Team Red has right now is that attractive (much reduced) pricing on Ryzen 7000 models isn’t casting a good light on the newcomers. Folks are looking at the likes of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D – especially gamers – rather than the 9700X. Or maybe in the case of gamers they’re holding out for the 9800X3D, given that AMD is rumored to be readying the 3D V-Cache spins on Zen 5 for an early launch later in 2024.

With the likelihood of discounts on these Ryzen 9000 processors coming in before long – even if not big ones, there’ll certainly be some money off, as the full MSRP never holds for that long after launch – that might also be a reason to be cautious around any Zen 5 purchasing decision. Especially if the lack of sales momentum itself drives those discounts to come to fruition more quickly than we normally see them.

Another rumor that’s popped up before is AMD potentially increasing the TDP (power usage) of the 9700X by a good chunk – making it more performant – and this speculation just surfaced again. Leaker Chi11eddog on X tells us that both the 9600X and 9700X could get their TDP upped from 65W to 105W with an incoming BIOS update (hat tip to VideoCardz).

Given this rumor has been floating around for a while, the more informed would-be CPU buyers out there could be waiting to see how this pans out before pulling the trigger on a purchase. Or you could argue this move might be AMD reacting to pep up the allure of these Zen 5 processors.

If we’re honest, though, we have a very hard time believing AMD would launch a couple of mid-range CPUs at 65W, having aimed for more efficiency with the design, then suddenly push out a BIOS update to crank that to 105W. It just doesn’t feel likely to happen, but then, we could be wrong.

As you can see, though, we aren’t exactly short of reasons as to why these initial Ryzen 9000 models might be struggling right out of the gate – but one way or another, that likely won’t remain the case going forward (especially when last-gen Ryzen 7000 stock eventually starts to thin on the shelves, of course).

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