It's official. AMD has priced up its new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 CPUs. And would you believe it, they're actually cheaper than the outgoing Ryzen 7000-series family.
To be more precise, they're cheaper than the launch prices for Ryzen 7000 from two years ago. Most Ryzen 7000 models are now available for quite a bit less than those 2022 launch prices.
In other words, model for model, you're going to pay more for a given new Ryzen 9000 CPU than what it's Ryzen 7000 predecessor is available for today. But in a world where GPU prices seem to go up exponentially for each new generation, this has got to be good news.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Ryzen 7000 | Cores and threads | Launch price | Ryzen 9000 | Cores and threads | Launch price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Ryzen 9 7950X | 16 cores, 32 threads | $699 | Ryzen 9 9950X | 16 cores, 32 threads | $649 |
| Row 1 - Cell 0 | Ryzen 9 7900X | 12 cores, 24 threads | $549 | Ryzen 9 9900X | 12 cores, 24 threads | $499 |
| Row 2 - Cell 0 | Ryzen 7 7700X | 8 cores, 16 threads | $399 | Ryzen 7 9700X | 8 cores, 16 threads | $359 |
| Row 3 - Cell 0 | Ryzen 5 7600X | 6 cores, 12 threads | $299 | Ryzen 5 9600X | 6 cores, 12 threads | $279 |
That means the new chips are launching at pricing between $20 and $50 lower than the original prices for the Ryzen 7000 series. Inevitably, it's the higher end chips that get the bigger discounts.
Of course, as we mentioned, current pricing for various Ryzen 7000 models has fallen since launch. Right now, you're looking at about $200 for a Ryzen 5 7600X, $295 for a Ryzen 7 7700X, $360 for a Ryzen 9 7900X and $525 for a Ryzen 9 7950X.
So, the new chips are quite a bit pricier than current pricing for the 7000 series. But Ryzen 9000 pricing will likely fall over time and so the trend line is in the right direction.
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Still, we shouldn't have to wait long to find out just what you'll be getting for your money from AMD's latest CPU designs. Look out for our full reviews of the new chips very soon.
Highlights include the aforementioned Zen 5 architecture with a 16% average uplift in IPC or instructions processed per clock cycle. Core counts remain the same, but clock speeds are very slightly up for some models.
We're not expecting a performance revolution with these new chips, but they should be tangibly faster. AMD is claiming performance gains up to 23% by some metrics. But we'll be the judge of that in our upcoming reviews. Watch this space.
