AMD Learns From Past Mistakes And Pushes Back Launch Of Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs ▉

AMD SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics, Jack Huynh on Twitter X:

We appreciate the excitement around Ryzen 9000 series processors. During final checks, we found the initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations. Out of an abundance of caution and to maintain the highest quality experiences for every Ryzen user, we are working with our channel partners to replace the initial production units with fresh units. As a result, there will be a short delay in retail availability. The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X processors will now go on sale on August 8th, and the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X processors will go on-sale on August 15th. Apologies for the delay. We pride ourselves in providing a high quality experience for every Ryzen user, and we look forward to our fans having a great experience with the new Ryzen 9000 series.

AMD is doing the right thing even if you want to be cynical about it. They’ve learned their lesson from the vapor chamber issues that were found during the launch of the Radeon 7900 XTX graphics cards and are not letting potential issues with the Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs.

As this article from AnandTech clarifies, this only affects only the desktop processors.

Importantly, however, this announcement is only for the Ryzen 9000 desktop processors, and not the Ryzen AI 300 mobile processors (Strix Point), which are still slated to launch next week. A mobile chip recall would be a much bigger issue (they’re in finished devices that would need significant labor to rework), but also, both the new desktop and mobile Ryzen processors are being made on the same TSMC N4 process node, and have significant overlap due to their shared use of the Zen 5 architecture. To be sure, mobile and desktop are very different dies, but it does strongly imply that whatever the issue is, it’s not a design flaw or a fabrication flaw in the silicon itself.

While it’s good to know it’s not a design flaw, which I still think is the case with Intel’s situation involving the 13th and 14th series i9 and i7 CPUs, we may never actually know the reason this happened. Hopefully we do once this situation gets sorted out though.

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