AMD Ryzen 9 9950X And 9900X CPUs Are Already Discounted Below MSRP
It hasn't taken long to see discounts on AMD's latest-generation Ryzen 9000 series processors based on its Zen 5 architecture. Slashed pricing first appeared in Germany, where the Ryzen 9 9900X was spotted selling for 7% under its MSRP. Now a little more than a week later, both of AMD's top Ryzen 9000 series processors are selling for less than MSRP at Amazon.
For those shooting straight for the top, the Ryzen 9 9950X is on sale for $623.29 at Amazon (save $25.71). That's about a 4% discount, so it's not a mega deal by any stretch. Nevertheless, it's below AMD's suggested pricing, with the discount appearing far earlier than what we're used to seeing. It's not unusual to see discounts on CPUs, but typically they don't drop in price so soon after release.
The Ryzen 9 9950X is a 16-core/32-thread processor with a 4.3GHz base clock, up to a 5.7GHz max boost clock, 64MB of L3 cache, and a 170W TDP. You can read our Ryzen 9 9950X and 9900X review to see how it performs, but straight to the point, it's exceptionally strong with creator workloads and 3D rendering.
Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 9900X is on sale for $449 at Amazon (save $50). That's a thicker discount (10% off) for what amounts to a 12-core/24-thread Zen 5 CPU with a 4.4GHz base clock and up to a 5.6GHz max boost clock, with the same 64MB of L3 cache and 170W TDP as its bigger sibling.
It's been an interesting journey for Zen 5 so far. AMD's more mainstream models, the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X (which we also reviewed), have gotten off to a slow start in their retail debut, and these early discounts on the Ryzen 9 models suggest that the same is true of the enthusiast SKUs.
Part of the reason could be due to performance figures not aligning with AMD's expectations. To address this, AMD worked with Microsoft on branch prediction optimizations in Windows, which it just backported to Windows 11 23H2.
Another possible reason is that potential buyers could be waiting for the release of Ryzen 9 9000X3D models with 3D V-cache. Gamers tend to be among the enthusiasts who are willing to splurge on flagship products, and with 3D V-cache models on the horizon, it makes sense that they'd opt to wait a bit longer.
Whatever the case, the end result is some early discounted pricing on AMD's newest silicon, and we're not complaining.
