AMD's Ryzen 9000 series has finally released with its new Zen 5 architecture. After experiencing an unusual delay (over a packaging typo) from its initial targeted launch date in late July, chips are finally starting to find their into the hands of consumers. Not only that, but retailers in Germany have already begun discounting the Ryzen 9 9900X by up to 7%, since there is more competition in Germany for Ryzen CPUs.
This also leads you to question how popular this expensive CPU may be after its seemingly lukewarm retail reception. Aside from the aforementioned delay, it is not evident this is a very large generational performance uplift for all but the most niche users. That said, it performed well in our testing—see our Ryzen 9 9950X and 9900X review for a bevy of benchmarks and analysis.
The Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X have also experienced seemingly slower early sales, even though these are the more affordable models in the lineup.
Pricing with an early discount in Germany for the AMD Ryzen 7 9900X
According to Hardware & Co, German retailers already have a 7% discount on the Ryzen 9 9900X. The previous Ryzen 7000 Series also had a bit of a slow start to its launch, but that was mainly attributed to the platform changes such a needing a new motherboard (Zen 4 introduced AMD's socket AM5) and DDR5 RAM that buyers had to contend with.
BH Photo has also listed the Ryzen 9 9900X at $449 instead of its $499 MSRP. While it currently shows as temporarily out of stock, this shows that U.S retailers may potentially be following in the footsteps of the German retailers if sales seem lukewarm.
The ultra popular Ryzen 5000 is perhaps an anomaly in recent CPU sales, having released during times of great demand for PC hardware. Intel has had its own share of problems with its 13th and 14th generation CPUs, with various problems reported with only minor fixes offered so far.
Given the current CPU landscape, it is no surprise buyers are apprehensive jumping into a new CPU architecture, even if it is Zen 5 by AMD. As a positive, these CPUs are simply drop-in upgrades for users of existing Ryzen 7000 AM5 motherboards.
Perhaps some of the issue comes down to how Ryzen 5000 series is still very popular with gamers today, with AMD even releasing new CPUs for AM4 occasionally. Many gamers are waiting for the 3D V-Cache variants of Ryzen 9000, since the Ryzen 7 7800X3D still appears to be at the top of the charts when it comes to purely gaming.
