AMD appears to have delayed the launch of its Ryzen 9000 Zen 5 processors due to a typo on the CPU itself. Model names can be confusing, especially when there are multiple new Ryzen 9000 series processors across three product ranges, but it seems that manufacturers themselves can sometimes get confused with their own products as well.
In this case, it appears that the Ryzen 7 9700X was mislabeled as a Ryzen 9 model, resulting in the name Ryzen 9 9700X. Found in reviews Regular Eagle Eye Spotted 9550 Pro.
For those who have been closely following AMD’s highly anticipated launches, this definitely doesn’t ring true, as the X700X models have always been Ryzen 7 and not Ryzen 9. Ryzen 9 was introduced to desktop CPUs with the Ryzen 9 3950X, and before that Ryzen 7 was the best with the Ryzen 7 1800X and so on. Thankfully (though whoever made the mistake is feeling very bad right now), there is most likely nothing physically wrong with the CPU under the heat spreader. That’s more than can be said for Intel at this point.
AMD delayed the Ryzen 9000 launch from July 31st last week, making the interesting admission that there were no issues with the manufacturing process or the CPUs themselves. While one wonders what the actual issues were for a move significant enough to postpone a flagship product launch – highly unusual for a product at this level – rumors have been flying around social media and forums since the delay was announced last week.
Ironically, Intel was simultaneously plagued by a potentially major stability issue that could have affected millions of owners of their 13th and 14th Gen CPUs. However, AMD was at least rushing to fix the issue before the actual launch, but they couldn’t ship a product with a major typo. In fact, this would be even worse than shipping a flawed product with a fix released later; many people wouldn’t even notice.
It remains to be seen if this will affect the availability of the new CPUs at launch, as the company is recalling everything affected by the typo and will likely have to reprint the heat spreaders as well. It may also have affected the packaging if the same erroneous details were passed down the same route.
However, the company seems confident enough to at least push the launch of the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X forward by a week. The Ryzen 5 9900X and Ryzen 7 9700X will launch on August 8th. This will be followed by the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X on August 15th.
The only unfortunate thing about this whole fiasco is that if this is indeed the reason AMD delayed the launch, then whoever made the mistake is probably not sleeping well, as enthusiasts who were planning to buy the new Ryzen 9000 CPUs this week will have to wait until August 8th for the lower-end models and until mid-August for the two Ryzen 9 models.
I’ll be reviewing the new Ryzen 9000 CPUs next week, so be sure to follow me on Forbes using the blue button below. Facebook or Youtube Get the latest news, analytics and benchmarks.