AMD’s new Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X, which have been geared toward claiming a spot among the many best processors, are off to a rocky begin. In line with early gross sales numbers from German retailer Mindfactory, the variety of new AMD CPUs the web site has shipped is barely within the double digits, regardless of being in the marketplace for practically every week.
Mindfactory is just one retailer, but it surely truly shows the variety of merchandise it bought on its web site. The Ryzen 5 9600X has seen over 20 sales, whereas the Ryzen 7 9700X has had over 30. You may see the dearth of enthusiasm for Zen 5 CPUs elsewhere, although. On Amazon’s bestsellers web page, the last-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D ranks within the first spot. The primary Zen 5 CPU on the record, the Ryzen 7 9700X, is in forty seventh place.
At this level, it’s pretty apparent why these CPUs aren’t off to an excellent begin. As you may see in our Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X review, AMD’s newest CPUs present barely any improve in gaming efficiency. They’re typically beat by Intel’s competing Core i9-14900K, and AMD’s personal Ryzen 7 7800X3D runs away with gaming efficiency. Even in productiveness apps, the place the beneficial properties are extra pronounced, AMD nonetheless doesn’t dominate throughout workloads.
The large drawback for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X is AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech. Given the slim efficiency beneficial properties, most customers are in all probability ready to see what chips like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D have to supply. That’s what we noticed within the earlier technology. Even months after releasing, AMD’s preliminary batch of Zen 4 CPUs saw terrible sales.
It doesn’t assist that these last-gen CPUs are less expensive now, too. Regardless of cutting the launch price of the Zen 5 vary, AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs are nonetheless round $100 cheaper throughout the board.
Over time, AMD’s new Zen 5 choices will drop in value they usually’ll turn into the go-to choices as soon as Zen 4 inventory has slowly disappeared from retailer cabinets. In the meanwhile, nonetheless, it doesn’t appear like the CPUs are wildly well-liked. Though 3D V-Cache has been an enormous boon to AMD’s gaming dominance, it’s additionally led to a stage of segmentation inside AMD’s lineup that’s not the best to navigate.
We count on 3D V-Cache variations of Ryzen 9000 CPUs a while in early 2025, however AMD hasn’t introduced a launch date but. By that time, I believe gross sales for Zen 5 CPUs can be in a a lot completely different spot.