Last week, AMD announced that they had delayed the launch of new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs by around two weeks from the original launch date of July 31st. The 9700X and 9600X have been pushed back to August 8th, and the 9950X and 9900X have been pushed back to August 15th. Why is this the case? It appears the delays may have been caused by a simple typo.
“AMD Ryzen 9 9700X” typo pictured on CPU
AMD has stated that samples “did not meet full quality expectations”, citing this as the main reason for the delay. However, an image of a mislabeled Ryzen 7 processor has been circulating on X, providing some insight into why we’ve seen this delay. The Ryzen 7 9700X has been shipped with a ‘Ryzen 9 9700X’ label. AMD is working with their “channel partners to replace the initial production units with fresh units”.
This typo was initially highlighted on July 25th by Ian Cutress on X, who commented on the AMD delay, stating “typo on the packaging”. However, it transpires that this typo seems to exist on the chip itself, which is a bigger job to replace than if it were just on the packaging.
This model number obviously isn’t going into mass production, if the image is to be believed that is. We doubt that AMD will make an official statement on this, but it’s a funny gaffe either way. For reference, here are the confirmed chips coming this August:
- Ryzen 9 9950X
- Ryzen 9 9900X
- Ryzen 7 9700X
- Ryzen 5 9600X
This isn’t the only labeling error
Tom’s Hardware has confirmed the mismarkings on the 9700X, discussed above. The labeling error isn’t isolated, as they have also learned that Ryzen 5 9600X models have suffered the same fate, being mislabeled as Ryzen 9.
This has prompted AMD to recall processors shipped to retailers for correction, which the company has cited as being the cause for the delayed launch. They have said that the affected processors will go through a screening process before being returned to retailers. Although AMD’s statement did not explicitly mention the labeling issues, the need for a recall due to these errors seems pretty clear at this point. The term “re-screening” used by AMD might suggest a re-etching or re-printing of the chip labels, commonly referred to in the industry as ‘silkscreening’.
There haven’t been any confirmations of mislabeled Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950Xs, but these powerful chips are still set to arrive a week later than the mislabeled Ryzen 5 and 7 models. While it’s somewhat disappointing for AMD to be delaying the launch of their 9000 series processors due to something as trivial as a typo, it’s arguably good news, as a manufacturing issue would be much more concerning.
Deal of the day
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPU
