Anika Begay
AMD has finally revealed launch prices for its new Ryzen 9000 desktop CPU lineup, and it’s pricing them slightly below the launch prices of Ryzen 7000. The flagship 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X will be priced at $649, which is $50 less than the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X that launched nearly two years ago. The rest of the lineup is priced between $20 and $50 less than equivalent Ryzen 7000 CPUs.
After a delay in the launch of the Ryzen 9000 CPUs “out of an abundance of caution,” the Ryzen 7 9700X ($359) and Ryzen 5 9600X ($279) will both launch on August 8, followed by the Ryzen 9 9950X ($649) and Ryzen 9 9900X ($499) on August 15.
AMD promises a performance increase of approximately 16 percent in instructions per cycle (IPC) over previous-generation Ryzen CPUs, promising big performance improvements in both productivity tasks and gaming.
AMD also launches new X870 and X870E motherboards chipsets for these new Ryzen 9000-series CPUs, but those motherboards won’t be available at launch. Fortunately, these new Ryzen 9000 CPUs will work in any existing AM5 motherboard, a socket that AMD has committed to supporting until at least 2027.
AMD’s new CPUs come as its main rival Intel is struggling with crashing and stability issues with its 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPUs. Intel has identified the root cause of the issues and plans to release a microcode fix in the coming weeks, but existing CPUs that are already affected by high voltages will need to be replaced.
