AMD Ryzen 9600X CPU will cost $279, Ryzen 9700X $359, Ryzen 9900X $499 and Ryzen 9950X $649. The prices are higher than expected in the Ryzen 9000, but lower than Ryzen 7000.
In June this year, AMD officially announced Zen 5 based Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs. This new series are going to launch with four CPUs at the start, they are:
- AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
- AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
- AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
- AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
The Ryzen 9000 series has some key improvements over the Ryzen 7000. These include 16% IPC average claimed uplift, faster RAM support, improved manufacturing nm node, but most importantly, massively deduced TDP in Ryzen 9900X and below processors.
During their announcement, AMD made no mention of their release dates or prices. AMD later revealed that they are going to release them on 31st of July.
Then, in a surprise, AMD announced that they are delaying their release to August due to some unclarified issues they found during their quality testing during the packaging phase. They even recalled all the CPUs from the retailers and computer makers.
While the internet was wild with unconfirmed photos of AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs having the wrong model number written on the CPU lid, it was not officially confirmed as the main reason by AMD.
Meanwhile, despite delaying the CPU release to August, AMD never officially announced their prices. Until now, that is.
Ryzen 9000 Prices Revealed
In a Twitter (now X) post, AMD officially revealed (via @ghost_motley & @harukaze5719) the prices of AMD Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs.
AMD Ryzen 9600X CPU will cost $279, AMD Ryzen 9700X $359, Ryzen 9900X $499 and Ryzen 9950X $649.
The SEP prices quoted in the tweet, means Suggested E-tail Price, which is virtually the same as MSRP.
Importantly, as earlier announced, Ryzen 7 9700X & Ryzen 5 9600X will release on 8th August. Whereas, Ryzen 9 9950X & Ryzen 9 9900X will release on 15th August.
Specs Table
For the benefits of the readers, we made a simple specs table, comparing the Ryzen 9000 CPUs and their comparable Ryzen 7000 series CPUs.
| CPU | Cores / Threads | Base Clock | Boost Clock | Cache | TDP | CPU Node | Max RAM Speed | MSRP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Ryzen 9 9950X | 16 / 32 | 4.3GHz | 5.7GHz | 80MB | 170W | 4nm | DDR5-5600 | $649 |
| AMD Ryzen 9 7950X | 16 / 32 | 4.5GHz | 5.7GHz | 80MB | 170W | 5nm | DDR5-5200 | $699 |
| AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | 12 / 24 | 4.4GHz | 5.6GHz | 76MB | 120W | 4nm | DDR5-5600 | $499 |
| AMD Ryzen 9 7900X | 12 / 24 | 4.7GHz | 5.6GHz | 76MB | 170W | 5nm | DDR5-5200 | $549 |
| AMD Ryzen 7 9700X | 8 / 16 | 3.8GHz | 5.5GHz | 40MB | 65W | 4nm | DDR5-5600 | $359 |
| AMD Ryzen 7 7700X | 8 / 16 | 4.5GHz | 5.4 GHz | 40MB | 105W | 5nm | DDR5-5200 | $399 |
| AMD Ryzen 5 9600X | 6 / 12 | 3.9GHz | 5.4GHz | 38MB | 65W | 4nm | DDR5-5600 | $279 |
| AMD Ryzen 5 7600X | 6 / 12 | 4.7GHz | 5.3 GHz | 38MB | 105W | 5nm | DDR5-5200 | $299 |
Conclusion
As one can see from the above prices, they are cheaper than the AMD Ryzen 7000 series. However, they are still more expensive than what people had earlier expected or even desired them to be.
Take Ryzen 9600X, it’s the cheapest Ryzen 9000 CPU we are going to see for some time. Yet it costs $279. Which budget or mainstream buyer will openly buy such an expensive 6-core CPU in this year. At best, the series should start with $200, if not less.
AMD always does this somehow. It releases its products at an expensive cost. The reviewers and buyers give it a bad review due to their costs. Then they reduce their prices later. But that reduction of prices hardly reach all parts of the world.
What took AMD so long to announce the prices of AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs is anyone’s guess. But the biggest reason could be they could be waiting to what’s happening with Intel.
CPUs from Intel in the Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh series are crashing everywhere. Intel’s profits are down. Even Intel’s stock prices are down. Intel’s promised microcode updates for the crashing CPUs are still not available and not easy to deploy either.
In this, AMD could be very happy to price their CPUs as much as they want, because they know their competition is having a bad name right now due to their issues.
Whatever the reason, let’s hope the reviews for the Ryzen 9000 series are good. AMD is making big claims. But that claims are only validated when reviewers review them.
