What just happened? AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D launched yesterday, and it's proving popular – perhaps too popular. The excellent CPU is sold out almost everywhere in the US and across Europe, a situation that's led to scalpers charging almost $1,500 for the $480 processor.
The Ryzen 7 9800X3D arrived like a breath of fresh air for consumers disappointed with AMD's underwhelming Zen 5 chips and Intel's Arrow Lake processors, which we rated poorly. Team Red's new chip, on the other hand, earned the title of The New Gaming CPU King in our review. Not surprisingly, all the praise means that finding one right now is like trying to get hold of a graphics card in 2021.
Newegg, Best Buy, Amazon, B&H Photo, Walmart, and most Micro Center locations are currently showing AMD's latest processor as sold out.
It's the same story in Europe. 3DCenter wrote on X that most of Germany's big computer hardware retailers were sold out of Ryzen 7 9800X3D chips, often before deliveries had arrived. This led to Mindfactory no longer accepting pre-orders.
According to 3DCenter forums, Mindfactory now has so many pre-orders for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D that even the subsequent delivery from AMD tomorrow is already sold out. As a result, Mindfactory is currently no longer accepting pre-orders.https://t.co/MUUkY6MAt9
– 3DCenter.org (@3DCenter_org) November 7, 2024
In the UK, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is out of stock and awaiting delivery around the end of the month at Scan and Overclockers UK. Other retailers also show the chip as sold out and awaiting delivery.
As we've seen many, many times before when a product's demand vastly outweighs supply, multiple listings for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D have appeared on eBay with inflated prices.
The greediest scalper is charging $1,500 for the CPU, a 212% increase over its MSRP. This is followed by listings priced between $645 and $999, the vast majority of which are confirmed pre-orders not yet in the sellers' hands.
The 9800X3D positions the large 64MB L3 cache below the cores rather than on top, as was the case with previous models, enabling cooler operating temperatures and higher clock speeds.
The chip's gaming performance is fantastic: it outperforms Intel's 14900K by an impressive 27% margin, and the Core Ultra 9 285K by 33%. We called it excellent value even at its $480 MSRP, but you probably shouldn't pay eBay prices for one.
Yesterday, CPU benchmarks for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D leaked online. The flagship is expected to be unveiled alongside the Ryzen 9 9900X3D at CES in January.