Last month, AMD unveiled the Ryzen 9000 series Zen 5 desktop processors including the 16-core 9950 it called “the world’s most powerful desktop consumer processor.” Those chips were set to be released on July 31st, but AMD SVP Jack Huynh announced on X that they’ll be delayed up to two weeks “out of an abundance of caution.”
The company found that initial production units didn’t meet quality expectations, so it plans to replace them with fresh units. “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,” Huynh wrote.
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…
— Jack Huynh (@JackMHuynh) July 24, 2024
There’s no issue with the design of the Ryzen 9000 silicon, and specifications will not change for the processors, a spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware. Rather, it’s related to an issue with product testing that resulted in “a small number of products reaching the market that do not meet our quality standards,” the company said.
Chip buyers may be nervous about such issues right now. Reports of instability problems with 13th-gen Intel desktop CPUs started in late 2022 and persisted with 14th-gen models. Earlier this week, Intel announced that it finally found the cause and promised to roll out a fix sometime in August. However, that won’t work for chips that have already degraded — those will need to be completely replaced by Intel.
