AMD really throwing shade on Intel
Updated: Jan 9, 2025 3:55 pm
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AMD’s 9800X3D, hailed as a world-beating processor, not only obliterated the competition but almost immediately vanished from store shelves. According to AMD executives, the shortage stems from an unexpected source: Intel’s “horrible” Arrow Lake CPUs.
You read that correctly, and it is indeed quite a statement, but to AMD’s credit, it has the performance and the sales numbers to back it up. Intel did absolutely drop the ball in terms of gaming performance on its new Arrow Lake chips, but it made up for what it lacked in gaming prowess in pure multi-core strength.
How has Intel’s CPUs affected AMD’s X3D stock?
In a recent Q&A with reporters, PC World reports on David McAfee, AMD’s corporate vice president and general manager of Client Channel Business, and Frank Azor, the company’s chief architect of gaming solutions, who explained the high demand for the 9800X3D and their struggle to keep up with production.
“We knew we built a great part,” said Azor. “We didn’t know the competitor had built such a horrible one. So the demand has been a little bit higher than we had originally forecasted.”
The demand for AMD’s X3D lineup, including the recently released 9800X3D, has exceeded all expectations. We reviewed the 9800X3D and we agree that it is absolutely the best gaming processor that the world has seen to date. And that’s with our experience of reviewing countless CPUs. Because of it’s massive success and it’s absence from store shelves, McAfee highlighted the production challenges, stating:
“What I can say is that we have been ramping our manufacturing capacity — the monthly, quarterly output of X3D parts. That’s 7000X3D as well as 9000X3D. It’s crazy how much we have increased over what we were planning.”
AMD knew they had a fantastic product, admittedly, it just didn’t think the competition would be so bad, driving so many into the arms of AMD to bask in the warm glow of stacked 3D V-cache.
AMD struggles to meet demand for the X3D CPUs: Suffering from success
Despite the ramp-up, production timelines remain a bottleneck. Chips take approximately 12 weeks to go from wafer manufacturing to finished product, leaving AMD racing to meet demand. As soon as we ever encounter stock for the 9800X3D, or even the 7800X3D for that matter, it is snapped up instantly. Customers even take to social media to show off their victory over the stock shortages in a primal display of dominance over those who are too slow.
“It’s longer than a quarter to really ramp the output of those products, and so we’re working very, very hard to catch up with demand. I think as we go through the first half of this year, you’ll see us continue to increase output of X3D. You know there’s no secret, X3D has become a far more important part of our CPU portfolio than I think we, any of us, would have predicted a year ago. And I think that trend will continue into the future, and we are ramping capacity to ensure we catch up with that demand as long as consumers want those X3D parts.”
Meanwhile, the affordable 7800X3D remains an exceptionally popular model among gamers and is still hard to get to this day despite being much older than the 9800X3D. McAfee noted that the 8-core X3D parts have historically outsold their higher-core counterparts by a significant margin.
“If I look historically at our 7000X3D products, the 7800X3D was dramatically the highest volume part in that product stack,” he said.
Looking ahead, AMD is working tirelessly to increase production capacity throughout the first half of the year. While Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs may have stumbled, AMD’s X3D processors have seized the moment, cementing their position as the go-to choice for gamers and enthusiasts. And we expect that to continue with the newly announced 9950X3D and 9900X3D at CES just days ago.
