It’s not been the most successful CPU launch for AMD, and that’s clearly shown as certain retailers have been lowering the prices of these processors even further since their launch. It might not be a surprise that barely any Zen 5 CPUs have been sold considering the lack of any great improvements over the previous generation, something we even covered in our 9900X review.
Well, specifically the best CPUs on the top end are the ones that are available for cheaper in the US, as both the 9900X and 9950X are priced lower than MSRP at B&H photo. There the former is available for $449 and the latter is at $623.30, which equates to a drop of $50 and $25 respectively. Although at the time of writing the lower of the two is currently out of stock so if you’re looking for one for cheaper you might have to look around elsewhere.
It seems this sort of pricing isn’t limited to just American retailers though. As PCGamesHardware in Germany reports, the pricing has been falling quite significantly over there with the street pricing significantly lower than AMD’s recommended pricing. As there the 9950X can be found for 4.8% lower, the 9900X 11.87% lower, 9700X 6.52% lower, and the 9600X only 4.53% in comparison.
Why we’re seeing these price drops
As mentioned previously, it is mostly down to the mid-tier reviews received by these processors, as the on-release reviews were rather underwhelming. It mostly came down to the lack of performance improvement compared to the previous generation, and just focusing on the efficiency of the chips. Except it might have gone too far with the power limitations and left plenty of performance on the table.
That is also the actual benchmarks that seemed so much lower than AMD’s, which recently came out to be from a different Windows setup. Seemingly AMD used an admin command to override all the security software on the OS and drop the performance drawbacks of Windows. However, it also leaves your PC rather vulnerable as it executes every exe with admin privilege and without checks so not recommended for an everyday user.
Instead, AMD is hoping for better Zen 5 performance following the Windows 11 update. Hopefully, that will help users choose the new CPUs instead. Honestly, though, most are going to like wait for the 9000 X3D releases seemingly coming at CES 2025. Seeing as their impact on gaming performance is so substantial, even the 5800X3D still holds up to today’s processors so of course you might as well wait for a cheaper choice with better performance.