AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPU delay is due to… typos on the chips? It seems unbelievable, but here we are

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AMD reportedly mislabels mid-range Ryzen 9000 CPUs as high-end chips – is this the reason for Zen 5’s delay to August?

AMD’s delay of the launch of its Ryzen 9000 processors – with the CPUs already shipped being recalled from retailers and PC makers – could apparently be due to a simple typo, if you can believe the (multiple) reports floating around out there.

Well, we say a simple typo, but this isn’t a mistake with the packaging and box, but the actual name of the processor on the chip itself (although there may be more to all this than just the typo, and we’ll come back to that).

Instead of a Ryzen 7 9700X processor, we can see a picture of a CPU (in the below post on X, from leaker HXL) where AMD has mislabelled it as the Ryzen 9 9700X.

Tom’s Hardware observes this is from a rogue, early review on Bilibili (in China), further noting that Ryzen 5 9600X chips have also been errantly engraved as ‘Ryzen 9’ models.

The Ryzen 9 label is, of course, reserved for the high-end chips in the Zen 5 family, which at launch will be the Ryzen 9 9950X and 9900X.

Previously, other sources have pinned the blame for the recall of Ryzen 9000 processors on AMD’s typo on an apparently large scale, including Ian Cutress on X (TechTechPotato, ex-Anandtech) as mentioned in HXL’s post.

Originally, AMD was set to unleash Ryzen 9000 processors on July 31, but that has been delayed to a staggered launch next month (on August 8, followed by August 15, for the Ryzen 5 and 7 models and Ryzen 9 models respectively).

(Image credit: AMD)

Analysis: Odd news – but good news? Definitely the former, but maybe not the latter

This is all a bit odd. AMD hasn’t officially revealed any reason for the Ryzen 9000 recall, instead issuing a vague message that the chips “did not meet our full quality expectations” and we guess being misnamed (slightly) could fit that bill.

You could further argue the reason that Team Red hasn’t admitted what’s happened here – if this is the case – is because it’s embarrassing. If we’d have been stood on an AMD production line with these chips coming through, glancing them over, we’re sure we’d have noticed a ‘Ryzen 9 9700X’ – to anyone with some passing familiarity with Team Red’s processors, surely that mistake would stand out like a sore thumb? (Apparently not).

However, even if there seems to be a solid amount of evidence of these chip typos, as Tom’s raises, there is also the possibility that this isn’t the only problem with the Zen 5 processors.

Indeed, if the whole recall is about fixing typos, that would actually be great news – yes, it’s a very silly mistake, but at least there are no underlying technical issues with Ryzen 9000 CPUs buried deep under the hood (cough, Intel, cough) that buyers might have to worry about.

But, it might be the case that there are typos, and also other possible issues of a technical nature. After all, AMD’s official statement on the recall used some language that made us think this was the case. Primarily the phrase that the recall was initiated “out of an abundance of caution and to maintain the highest quality experiences for every Ryzen user” – which hardly seems to fit a chip having Ryzen 9 written on it instead of Ryzen 7 or 5. Does it?

Perhaps now these mismarked processors have come to light, AMD will be issuing a further statement to clarify what’s gone on here. We’ve got a feeling we might hear something later today.

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