Supply issues of AMD Ryzen 9 are helping Intel

Bit Tech reports AMD is having issues with the yields of its higher-end Ryzen 3000 series processors. The Ryzen 9 3950X is hitting the market next month, four to five months later than it was first announced, and even the Ryzen 9 3900X is pretty hard to find. Industry consensus is reportedly that AMD can't make enough parts that can hit the higher frequencies and that many of the better-binned parts are ending up in the EPYC server lineup.

Overall, this seems like a reasonable assumption given the issues AMD had with the Boost frequencies of its Zen 2-based CPUs. The Ryzen 9 3900X is also hard to find and the poor stock has pushed prices up 10 to 15 percent above the chip's launch price. This sparks speculation that the Ryzen 9 3950X will also be hard to find at its official MSRP.

Overall, as the site suggests, the poor supply of AMD's high-end parts is helping Intel and even makes the Cascade Lake-X platform seem more appealing than it first appeared to be. Intel is cutting the pricing of its chips whereas those from AMD are ending up being more expensive than intended.

That's a reasonable assumption given that the supply issues that were announced recently at TMSC, which makes the 7nm CPUs, came a while after I was having these discussions. As disappointing as it might be to wait for AMD's mighty 16-core AM4 CPU, there are far more pressing concerns for 3rd Gen Ryzen. The price increases and poor stock levels are worrying and for several reasons. Firstly, an inability to get hold of the CPUs has already sparked plenty of comments in forums and on social media from would-be 3900X and 3950X owners jumping ship and either going Intel now or changing plans and waiting for its cut-price Cascade Lake-X CPUs due next month. That's on forums that are usually very pro-AMD, but at the end of the day, most enthusiasts will vote with their wallet, and if a product isn't in stock, I can fully appreciate why people are doing this. Brand loyalty does you no favours when it come to PC hardware, and a great CPU is no good to anyone if you can only appreciate it on paper.