AMD’s shock Zen 5 CPU delay caused by typos: Report

The announcement that AMD was going to delay its latest Ryzen CPUs was a shock to the tech world. Could it all have been down to a simple typo?

AMD announced last week that the launch of the Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs was delayed. The 9700X and 9600X have been pushed back to August 8th, while the 9950X and 9900X are now expected on August 15th.

No reason has been provided to explain the delay, but a report from Videocardz now suggests that a basic typing error might be the real culprit behind the delay.

The typo was first mentioned by tech analyst Dr Ian Cutress, though at that time it was not clear if the typo was on the CPU shell itself, or just on the outer packaging.

Later it emerged that a batch of Ryzen 7 9700X processors had been shipped with an incorrect label. The outer cover shows these processors as Ryzen 9 9700X. Tom’s Hardware also identified a Ryzen 5 9600X that was mislabelled as a Ryzen 9.

While this issue would not affect the performance, it could potentially cause confusion among customers.

AMD pointed to unspecified quality issues when it announced the launch delay, saying: “We appreciate the excitement around Ryzen 9000 series processors. During final checks, we found initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations.”

The labels on the CPU cover are laser engraved. This means that either all the affected CPUs would need to be re-lidded, or the lids would need to be scrubbed as go through the laser engraving line once again. Either way, it would be a time-intensive process.

If the problem really is just a single number typo, perhaps a simple sticker on the packaging would be a better option.