Price leak suggests AMD may not make Ryzen 9700X and 9600X CPUs any cheaper – but there’s another reason Intel might be worried
AMD’s next-gen Ryzen 9000 desktop processors are not far off now, and we’ve caught another price leak giving us a clue of how much these chips will sell for when they debut later in July.
Following leaks in Europe and the US, a Canadian retailer has accidentally spilled pricing for the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X, two of the mid-range workhorses of the inbound Zen 5 range.
According to PC-Canada, the 9700X is set to cost CA$517, which via a currency conversion translates to $380 in the US, or around £295, AU$560, whereas the 9600X is listed at CA$401 (about $295, £230, AU$435).
As Wccftech points out, this is roughly in line with the MSRP of the equivalent current-gen 7700X and 7600X CPUs when they were launched – though it’s actually a touch less in the case of the former (5% less, in fact).
Interestingly, leaked figures on stock levels from the Canadian retailer show that plenty of units are going to be on shelves (virtual or otherwise) at launch on July 31 (well, that’s the rumor – and AMD has told us it will be July at some point). Wccftech’s sources elsewhere also indicate healthy stock levels will be a hallmark of the Zen 5 launch.
Analysis: Pricing makes sense – as the advantage seems to be with AMD
So, the suggestion is that AMD is going to pretty much maintain pricing for Ryzen 9000 at the same levels as Ryzen 7000. However, what we must always remember with pre-release price leaks like this is that they could well be placeholders.
Furthermore, there’s always a suspicion that such leaks happen accidentally-on-purpose, as it grabs a bit of publicity for the retailer in question. This is a suspicion somewhat heightened by the fact that PC-Canada has popped up in the past doing this (leaking Intel’s Core i9-14900KS price tag ahead of its launch most recently).
Make your own mind up on that, of course – and at any rate, we certainly don’t object to getting a hint of pricing, albeit a heavily caveated one. In fairness, we would expect AMD to roughly maintain its pricing, based on past form, and also the fact that Ryzen 9000 is coming to market without a recent challenger from Intel – meaning the pressure isn’t exactly on.
In the upcoming battle of the best CPUs, Team Blue’s next-gen Arrow Lake chips are still some way off, albeit due later this year – perhaps in September – so Zen 5 is going to have a golden moment in the sales sunlight, as it were, until then. (Especially if stock is plentiful, too, as appears to be the case.)
Intel’s current Raptor Lake Refresh processors are doubtless going to struggle to compete with Zen 5’s advancements, which are rumored to be substantial in some respects – including with the mid-range CPUs that are the subject of these price leaks. Also, Ryzen 9000 X3D processors might be out by September, too, possibly compounding Intel’s misery in the PC gaming arena.
All that said, we don’t know how powerful Arrow Lake will be, and some hints have suggested it could be a major leap for Team Blue.
