The launch of AMD’s highly anticipated Ryzen 9000 series, which will rival the best CPUs, has been pushed back by a couple of weeks, moving it from July 31 to August 8 for the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X and August 15 for the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X chips. Nevertheless, U.S. retailers have started listing these hot new processors with included pricing information.
AMD has not confirmed the official pricing for these processors, but Best Buy has listed the entire Zen 5 lineup. The prices range from $279 for the Ryzen 5 9600X to $599 for the Ryzen 9 9950X. Although the price tags look reasonable, we recommend approaching them cautiously since they could be placeholders.
According to Best Buy’s listings, AMD’s Zen 5 processors are seemingly on a downward trend in terms of pricing, which means great news for everyone looking to upgrade immediately as soon as these chips come out. For example, the top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 9950X is listed on Best Buy for $599, whereas the previous flagship Ryzen 9 7950X launched at $699, and the even older Ryzen 9 5950X debuted at $799.
Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 9900X seemingly retails for $449, $100 less than the launch price for the Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 5900X. On the other hand, Best Buy has the Ryzen 7 9700X for $359, which is $40 cheaper than the Ryzen 7 7700X and $90 lower than the Ryzen 7 5800X. Even the base-tier Ryzen 5 9600X, which sells for $279, is $20 more affordable than the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 5 5600X when they arrived on the scene.
It's incredible how AMD is evidently launching the Ryzen 9000 series at lower prices than the previous Ryzen 700 series. The price difference is pretty significant, with savings of up to $100 for specific SKUs. The Zen 5 parts already look like a formidable upgrade option for consumers, judging by pricing alone. However, we still have to put Ryzen 9000 through our labs to quantify the actual performance uplift that these processors will deliver over their older brethren.
Intel won't have an answer for Ryzen 9000 until later this year with the chipmaker's next-generation Core Ultra 200 (codenamed Arrow Lake) processors. With the whole Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh instability drama and Ryzen 9000's attractive MSRP, Intel will not easily compete with Zen 5.
