AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU Now Available For $623, Ryzen 9 9900X For $449, A 10% Price Drop Days After Launch

Prices of AMD's high-end "Zen 5" CPUs, the Ryzen 9 9950X & the Ryzen 9 9900X, have come crashing down after the launch week.

The AMD Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" Desktop CPUs are decent chips, offering improved multi-threaded performance and good efficiency however, the prices didn't receive a good reception from users since we have seen a slow start to sales, and certain retailers have only sold less than 100 units in the days following the official launch.

Earlier, it was reported that AMD's Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" Desktop CPUs were seeing price drops of as much as 8% in the European markets. These price cuts were mostly limited to the high-end CPUs whereas the mainstream Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 lineup need such discounts the most. These price cuts were reactionary to the slow sales of the newly launched chip but we have also heard reports that the supply of Zen 5 chips isn't a lot and AMD is working with its partners to restock the chips.

For the US marketplaces, Microcenter was the first to offer a bundle deal for AMD's Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X. These deals are yet to be extended to the higher-end Ryzen 9 offerings but US retailers have started to implement the first price cuts on the top Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X chips.

As of right now (8/24/24), B&H Photo is offering the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU for $623 US which is 4% below its MSRP of $699 US while the Ryzen 9 9900X is being sold for $449 US which is 10% below its MSRP of $499 US. These are some major price drops right after its introduction last week. Other retailers have also slashed the pricing for the Ryzen 9 9900X down to $493.43 US but it's not as aggressive as B&H. But we know that once one retailer offers a discount, others follow it soon & with the same trend being seen across EU retailers, we can see further drops in the US market.

AMD recently shared a new blog post talking about the gaming performance of its Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" CPUs. The new evaluation done by AMD shows that the Ryzen 9000 gaming performance is on par with Intel's current-gen offerings.

This kind of disappointed gamers as the previous numbers painted a different story, showcasing over 10% lead for the Zen 5 chips against the competition. The same performance results were noticed by reviewers who saw similar or slightly faster gaming performance versus the previous-gen, less so the competition. It looks like the price adjustments might come in reflection of this post so let's wait and see.