It’s been a few months since the launch of Ryzen 7 9800X3D and the CPU is still difficult to find on store shelves, harder still at MSRP. It’s no surprise that such a splendid chip is proving popular among consumers, gamers in particular, but questions have since arisen concerning the shortage of stock. According to a tongue-in-cheek comment from AMD, you can partly point the finger at Intel.
During a roundtable interview with AMD at CES 2025, Tom’s Hardware asked about the reason behind Ryzen 7 9800X3D stock shortages. In response, AMD Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions, Frank Azor said: “We knew we built a great part. We didn’t know the competitor had built a horrible one, so the demand has been a little higher than we forecasted.” To be completely clear, Azor is referring to Intel and its Core Ultra 200S Series.
While Club386 doesn’t share Azor’s likely half-joking assessment of Core Ultra 9 285K, there’s merit to demand for AMD’s CPU vastly outweighing its competitor. Looking at Ryzen 7 9800X3D sales figures relative to Core Ultra 200S, the popularity of each isn’t remotely close. To be fair to Intel, though, the X3D processor is also running rings around its Ryzen 9000 Series siblings.
With Core Ultra 200S performance fixes now readily available, it’s possible that interest in the CPUs could improve and alleviate supply pressures for AMD. However, the jury’s still out on how much said patches boost the competitiveness of chips like Core Ultra 9 285K relative to Ryzen 7 9800X3D. With CES 2025 winding down, this particular picture should become clear soon but I can’t foresee this being an easy turnaround for Intel.
Complicating matters further is the imminent arrival of Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D. AMD claims the former of the two processors easily matches or greatly exceeds the performance of Core Ultra 9 285K, in both applications and games. You and I should take these claims with a pinch of salt but it won’t be too long before Club386 gets its hands on the 3D V-Cache flagship and puts them to the test.
While we wait for the next batch of 3D V-Cache processors to make their splash on the CPU space, be sure to follow Club386 on Google News. In doing so, you’ll know as soon as our reviews for each chip are available to read, alongside all the news and our thoughts on today’s tech.
