So, the tech world mildly panicked when AMD announces it is delaying the launch of Ryzen 9000 processors by up to 2 weeks, in a time when Intel is struggling to solve a months-long stability issue that has potentially plagued a huge number of modern CPUs on the market. However, as it turns out, the delay may have come down to a simple mistake on the chips’ labels.
(Not) Everything Is Ryzen 9
Originated from a Bilibili video review (now taken down) and spotted by @9550pro on X (Twitter), the chip in question is the Ryzen 7 9700X – however, the labels shown on the processor’s integrated heat spreader (IHS) has mislabeled the chip as “Ryzen 9 9700X”. Tom’s Hardware also reports that some mislabeled Ryzen “9” 9600X have ended up in retail outlets, which largely explains AMD’s initial announcement to pull back all of its units to remediate the issue.
The company further told the publication that it has pulled back all Ryzen 9000 chips for ‘re-screening’. This could mean two things as far as English goes: one, AMD is going to conduct its quality inspection process once again to make sure these chips are deemed suitable for consumer use; and two, this may indicate a process called ‘silkscreening’, which is the process that etch the processor labels directly onto its IHS.
It’s not exactly clear if the typo is the only issue here, as the actual Ryzen 9 processors gets further delayed as well. However, no signs are pointing to anything hardware-related thus far, though we’ll have to wait for any further announcements from the chipmaker to be sure.
Pokdepinion: Hopefully it’s just the labeling mistake.
