Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

No one is buying AMD’s new Zen 5 CPUs, and it’s painfully obvious why

The Ryzen 9 9900X sitting on its box.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

AMD’s new Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X, which were aimed at claiming a spot among the best processors, are off to a rocky start. According to early sales numbers from German retailer Mindfactory, the number of new AMD CPUs the website has shipped is only in the double digits, despite being on the market for nearly a week.

Mindfactory is only one retailer, but it actually displays the number of products it sold on its website. The Ryzen 5 9600X has seen over 20 sales, while the Ryzen 7 9700X has had over 30. You can see the lack of enthusiasm for Zen 5 CPUs elsewhere, though. On Amazon’s bestsellers page, the last-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D ranks in the first spot. The first Zen 5 CPU on the list, the Ryzen 7 9700X, is in 47th place.

At this point, it’s fairly obvious why these CPUs aren’t off to a great start. As you can see in our Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X review, AMD’s latest CPUs provide barely any increase in gaming performance. They’re often beat by Intel’s competing Core i9-14900K, and AMD’s own Ryzen 7 7800X3D runs away with gaming performance. Even in productivity apps, where the gains are more pronounced, AMD still doesn’t dominate across workloads.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

The big problem for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X is AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech. Given the slim performance gains, most users are probably waiting to see what chips like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D have to offer. That’s what we saw in the previous generation. Even months after releasing, AMD’s initial batch of Zen 4 CPUs saw terrible sales.

It doesn’t help that these last-gen CPUs are much cheaper now, too. Despite cutting the launch price of the Zen 5 range, AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs are still around $100 cheaper across the board.

Over time, AMD’s new Zen 5 options will drop in price and they’ll become the go-to options once Zen 4 stock has slowly disappeared from store shelves. At the moment, however, it doesn’t look like the CPUs are wildly popular. Although 3D V-Cache has been a huge boon to AMD’s gaming dominance, it’s also led to a level of segmentation within AMD’s lineup that’s not the easiest to navigate.

We expect 3D V-Cache versions of Ryzen 9000 CPUs some time in early 2025, but AMD hasn’t announced a release date yet. By that point, I suspect sales for Zen 5 CPUs will be in a much different spot.

Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPUs were delayed for the most ridiculous reason
Pads on the bottom of the Ryzen 9 7950X.

It came as a shock last week when AMD revealed that it would be delaying its Ryzen 9000 CPUs by up to two weeks. We might have some insight into why AMD made that last-minute decision now. A review posted on BilliBilli shows the Ryzen 7 9700X labeled as a Ryzen 9 9700X -- a typo that also affected the Ryzen 5 7600X, which carried the same Ryzen 9 branding, according to Tom's Hardware.

AMD has yet to confirm why the chips were delayed, outside of an issue with packaging. The range of four CPUs was supposed to arrive on July 31, but AMD is splitting the launch now. The Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X are arriving on August 8, while the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X are arriving on August 15. The fact that AMD is splitting up the launch lends some credibility to the idea that the delay was due to a typo on the lower-end models.

Read more
I grilled Intel about its massive stability problem — here’s what it told me
intel instability unanswered questions dt respec

Intel is in trouble. We've known there was a problem for months, but the true scope of the issue is coming into focus. Intel has finally said a microcode update that will solve the instability problem is on the way, but it won't be here for several weeks. It's not much of a resolution, either -- I still have a lot of questions about Intel's instability problem, and how it plans to address the issue going forward.

I've sent the list of questions below to Intel for a response, and in cases where Intel has responded, I'll provide the exact quote. We've definitely seen some shifty communication from Intel regarding the instability issue up to this point, so I'll fill in the gaps if there's anywhere Intel wasn't able to provide a solid answer.
How will this impact performance?

Read more
Gamers are flocking to return Intel CPUs — and some are permanently damaged
A hand holds the Intel Core i9-12900KS.

Intel's troubles with instability on 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs continues to escalate, and a new report suggests that gamers are returning these CPUs at a much higher rate than retailers expect. An anonymous European retailer says they've seen four times as many returns for 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs compared to 12th-gen, according to a report from French outlet Les Numeriques.

Returns have only ramped up recently, however. The retailer says that in the six months following the release of all three generations, the return rates are nearly identical. Looking at the rate now, however, 13th-gen CPUs are being returned four times as often as 12th-gen, while 14th-gen CPUs are being return three times as much. Given what we've learned about Intel's instability issue, this suggests that the processors do, indeed, degrade over time.

Read more