AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPUs were delayed for a ridiculous reason

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.

Now that we’ve seen some of these mismarked CPUs surface, it’s safe to say the incorrect naming at least played a factor in AMD’s recall. It may not be the only reason, however. There has been some concern that there is a deeper issue that AMD wants to address with Ryzen 9000, especially given the backdrop of Intel’s troubles with 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs. We have no reason to believe there’s a deeper quality issue at this point.

The real reason for the Ryzen 9000 delay ….@IanCutress is right. pic.twitter.com/oM6ePWU6WC

— HXL (@9550pro) July 28, 2024

AMD has recalled all of the CPUs sent out in its initial batch for re-screening, both in boxed retail units and prebuilt systems. The company began the recall prior to its announcement of a delay. Given the short delay — only a week for the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7, and two weeks for the Ryzen 9s — it’s safe to assume the scale of the problem is small. It only seems to have affected the very first shipment of these CPUs.

Given the delay of the CPUs themselves, reviews are also delayed. Hardware Unboxed says reviews will go live a day before release for all models. That would be August 7 for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X, and August 14 for the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X.

Although a typo seems like a minor issue, it could cause a lot of trouble if AMD has larger issues with its packaging — such as boxes being mislabeled, or completely incorrect model numbers screened on the CPU. It’s worth noting that AMD didn’t delay the release of its Ryzen AI 300 laptop CPUs — read our Asus ZenBook S 16 review for more on that — which use the same Zen 5 architecture as Ryzen 9000.