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Highly anticipated: AMD has remained silent about the reason behind the last-minute delay of its next-generation Zen 5 CPUs. However, strong evidence suggests that a minor but important detail, unrelated to hardware performance or reliability, is the cause. Meanwhile, an early benchmark of the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X is setting a new clock speed record.
Established leakers claim that incorrectly labeled CPUs are the primary cause behind the delay of AMD's upcoming Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 processors. Although there is no official confirmation about it, Tom's Hardware also reports seeing chips with erroneous markings.
Tipster "9550pro" confirmed an earlier claim from analyst Ian Cutress by posting a photo of a processor labeled "Ryzen 9 9700X." When AMD unveiled Zen 5 last month, it outlined two Ryzen 9 models: the 9900X and 9950X.
The real reason for the Ryzen 9000 delay ....@IanCutress is right. pic.twitter.com/oM6ePWU6WC
– HXL (@9550pro) July 28, 2024
Thus, the chip pictured above should be labeled as Ryzen 7 9700X. Tom's Hardware also caught word of incorrectly labeled Ryzen 9 9600X processors, which should be marked as Ryzen 5, shipping to retailers.
These typos fit AMD's vague description of packaging-related issues causing the Zen 5 delay. Although relatively minor, the problem could cause significant confusion for retailers and customers.
Hopefully, the labeling mishap is the only issue AMD discovered. Meanwhile, Intel is facing worse problems with its 13th and 14th-generation Alder Lake CPUs, which have experienced disturbingly high failure rates due to a microcode algorithm error affecting voltages.
The company is preparing a patch for mid-August, but units already experiencing crashes must be returned, and Intel does not plan to recall them.
In other related news, the Ryzen 9 9950X set a new overclocking record at the China Joy event. Content creator Ordinary Uncle Tony pushed the processor to a blistering 6.5GHz, some 750MHz over the previously teased theoretical maximum of 5.85GHz. The temperature reached 164.2 Celsius despite Tony's generous application of LN2 coolant.
The trial posted a multi-thread Cinebench score of 55,327, significantly surpassing the Zen 4 Ryzen 9 7950X's record of 50,843. Experienced overclockers might be able to push it even further.
Zen 5 was set to debut on July 31, but AMD's next-gen CPUs now have a two-tiered release schedule planned for early August. The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X will be available from August 8, with the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X following on August 15.