AMD Ryzen 9000 delayed after first chips fail to meet "quality expectations"

In a certifiably not-great week for gaming CPUs, AMD have announced that the new Ryzen 9000 series is being delayed for a few days. That’s thanks to initial production units not being up to standards, an AMD executive admitted, and comes shortly after rivals Intel copped to a potentially chip-killing fault in their latest Core processors. Ah well, there’s always – oh, wait. No. Those are the only two.

Jack Huynh, a general manager in AMD’s Computing and Graphics dvision, Xeeted that "a short delay in retail availability" will affect the new Ryzens while they iron out some kinks discovered in the first batches. Having been previously expected on July 31st, the 9000 series era will instead begin with the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X on August 8th, while the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X are delayed until August 15th.

"During final checks, we found the initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations", Hunh said. "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."

While the exact issues with these early Ryzens hasn’t been specified, it does sound like more of an inherent hardware problem than what’s been ailing those Intel chips. While the affected 13th and 14th Gen Core CPUs can fail entirely, the accused cause – a microcode algorithm sending incorrect voltage requests – can, Intel say, be fixed up with what is more or less a firmware patch. Not something that demands a full recall-and-replace operation, as AMD are undertaking. That said, better to take a little extra time to release something that works, rather than launch now and fix later, eh? Eh? AMD please do actually fix them so this optimism doesn’t look childishly misplaced in five weeks' time, cheers.