While excitement (or derision) might currently be directed towards Nvidia's new graphics cards and AMD's upcoming ones, let's not forget that the past few months has seen the introduction of new CPU line-ups from both Intel and AMD. From Intel, we had the somewhat underwhelming Core Ultra 200S 'Arrow Lake' line-up, and from AMD, we had the first of its 9000-series 'Zen 5' processors. And on the latter front, AMD's now claiming pretty spectacular success.
During AMD's recent Q4 2024 earnings call (transcript here), AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su explained that the company "saw our highest sell-out in many years, as we went through the holiday season, launching our new gaming CPUs." Given we've been unable to find reasonably priced AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs in stock since launch, this tracks.
Stock sell-outs are, of course, not always due to over-demand but can also be due to under-supply. This is something we're well aware of in the wake of the Nvidia RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 launch, which some are calling a paper launch, ie, a launch in name only with little actual stock to back it.
The 9000-series most certainly wasn't a paper launch, but stock has been hard to come by. Dr Su says: "We actually think that what we're seeing is very strong adoption of our new products [...] Frankly, [the gaming CPUs] have been constrained in the market, and we've continued shipping very strongly through the month of January as we are catching up with some demand there."
This is good news amidst the mixed, however, as the earnings call also highlights that the gaming graphics division isn't doing too well—although some of that could be to do with the company nearing the end of a desktop GPU and console GPU generation. On this front, we'll have to see how well the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT do when they launch in a month or so.
On the CPU front, we can't forget that the market has kind of been set in AMD's favour, too. Yes, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best CPU for gaming on the market by quite a margin, but the competition hasn't exactly been compelling, either. Intel's latest Core Ultra 200S line-up hasn't pushed the boat out very far and many of its 13th and 14th Gen CPUs were plagued with instability issues.
In other words—and not to deny the genuine prowess of AMD's latest desktop and mobile processors—given Intel's offerings, I'd be more surprised if AMD's client CPU division wasn't doing well.
Of course, this is saying nothing of the mobile side. AMD's latest AI 300 'Strix Point' mobile processors have been adopted not only in laptops but also in the OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro, with presumably more handhelds to come. Intel's not empty-handed on this front either, though, as a Core Ultra 200V 'Lunar Lake' mobile processor sits inside the MSI Claw 8 AI+. Lunar Lake processors are very efficient, but for gaming they seem to struggle to compete with the brute graphical horsepower of Strix Point chips.
The two companies' offerings here are much closer than on the desktop side, though. That's probably why Dr Su says: "Going into the first quarter, we do expect seasonality in there. But the part of our business that is performing better than seasonality is the desktop portion of the business."
Great stuff, Su, just get those shelves stacked with fresh Ryzen 7 9800X3D chips and let us satiate that demand. I've seen enough 'out of stock' signs already this year.
