AMD’s Entire Ryzen 9 3950X 16 Core CPU Inventory Sold Out in Japan

[philliphaydon]

I think there was a link last friday of Ryzen being top seller for like 6 of the top spots on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Co...

It looks like today the top 10 are all Ryzen. This is crazy.

[londons_explore]

Rumour is a corporate client wasn't given access to as many units as they wanted, so decided to buy retail.

[Nokinside]

DIY CPU retail market for processors is extremely tiny market. Very high margin, but insignificant.

AMD's challenge is getting enough processors out in the enterprise market. They need to grow the market share now when they have the technical advantage. Intel can sell their inferior CPU's for higher price because they can deliver large volumes and satisfy demand.

Revenue comparison 2018:

    Intel  $70.8 billion
      AMD   $6.5 billion

AMD is fabless, so they are in competition with other GF and TSMC customers for manufacturing capacity. Apple,Nvidia,Qualcomm and many others.

[nosianu]

Indeed. I'm trying to find a suitable vendor here in Germany (as a small software making business), but all I can find (when I look for Ryzen powered PCs) are small local dealers - with usually very mixed reviews and questionable support. I always got Dell, and while I would not want to rely on their support for any software issues, at least whenever we had trouble with hardware I could get that replaced easily and quickly. Those smaller dealers don't even have any decent bundled support options, and no guarantees similar to what I can get from the "big guys". The reviews accordingly show a lot of variation and randomness (basically, all those who have no issues with their purchase give five stars, but of those needing support, even if it is for issues clearly caused by the vendor, have a good chance of telling a nightmare support story).

So while I still want a Ryzen PC, I also want five years of 24 hour hardware support, and I feel more confident to get that from Dell rather than from some small local dealer for whom any support issue is a big deal for their own bottom line and where employees are under more pressure than those working for a big vendor. The big ones still are "Intel only" - apart from >$2,000 gaming PCs (I usually buy ca. $1,000 PCs with minimal graphics card, videos only (hardware accelerated decoding is nice to have; but too much of a card costs too much energy for no reason, even base energy when not in gaming mode is much higher - GTX 1050Ti using just motherboard energy is perfect, as an example), no gaming ever, but good components and large RAM and SSD, for developers).

PS: Any Germans here who found a solution for needs such as mine?

[endorphone]

"AMD is fabless"

Which also means they can jump to whatever the current hot stuff is in the fab world, letting the big fabs (which are few in number, but still >1) compete on technical merits.

Where Intel has a corporate need to use whatever fabs they've invested in, and to be anchored by whatever the limitation of their fabs are. They aren't really limited by that -- they could just get TSMC to make some stuff for them or something --- but they're Intel so they'll just make 10+++++++

[admax88q]

> AMD is fabless, so they are in competition with other GF and TSMC customers for manufacturing capacity.

That also means that they don't have all the fab expenses that Intel does.

[equasar]

I hope AMD doesn't slow down on the performance side with their 3rd generation of Zen.

I want to get a new laptop next year and I hope it comes with a good mobile Ryzen processor with Thunderbolt support.

[toast0]

AMDs mobile and APU line is generally about a year behind desktop, so expect to see Zen 2 cores in mobile mid 2020, numbered as Ryzen 4xxx.

Zen 2 combined with much better than intel integrated GPU is likely going to make a very nice dent in marketshare, unless Intel pulls a rabbit out of their hat.

[raxxorrax]

I think AMD is still (slightly) behind in power consumption, especially if the CPU is idling. Some tests suggest that this is heavily dependent on the motherboards chipset though. But power consumption is probably very important for the industry and for notebook devices.

That said, AMD becoming a worthy competitor on the market again is awesome.

[mcv]

I recently bought a new laptop and actually wanted AMD, but none of the laptops I was inteested in were available with one. It appears that high-end laptops are still ruled by Intel. Do AMDs run too hot for mobile or something?

[shmerl]

Isn't Thunderbolt getting replaced with USB4, after Intel opened it up?

[ekoutanov]

AMD now reminds me of their Athlon/K7 glory days

[jdsully]

I drove 2 hours to get my 3900X. I was worried it would be too much horsepower but it spends a lot of its time >80% utilization.

These cores are great for debugging threading issues. I would trade it for a 3950X if I could find one.

[3fe9a03ccd14ca5]

I wish my home server performed more tasks, so I can justify an upgrade from my i7. Unfortunately even as it stands today it’s mostly idle despite me doing quite a bit with it.

Besides, it’s really annoying I need to upgrade from DDR3.

[snuxoll]

I’ve been sticking with Ivy Bridge-EN chips for my lab at home because used DDR3 RDIMM’s are dirt cheap, not to mention the chips and systems themselves. In a few years once used Naples gear hits the market I may consider upgrading, but I’m also quite fond of the low power draw my 2450L v2’s have.

[benbristow]

Have you checked power consumption? Might be an excuse to switch!

[safog]

I bit the bullet and upgraded from 4670k + DDR3 --> X570 Mobo + R5 3700X. Costs ~$500 assuming you can keep your GPU, PSU, Case, fans etc. and you don't want to go all our RGB on everything.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> Besides, it’s really annoying I need to upgrade from DDR3.

Do you? You can use an older AM4 motherboard that uses DDR3 with Ryzen 3000, no?

[flatiron]

I’m still on haswell i5 for my home server. Still pretty powerful.

[hurrdurr2]

I'm running a Ryzen 5 2600X in my new pc. 12 threads running at 4 GHz for 150 tax included is just too good to pass up.

[puranjay]

I have a Ryzen 3700x on my new PC. First PC I ever built by hand. Mostly used for music production. 10 instances of Serum in Ableton with 50+ tracks and the thing barely crosses 15% CPU utilization

[hourislate]

MicroCenter had the Ryzen 7 2700x for $129 and the Asus ROG Strix B450 Gaming Board for $79 today. I picked that up and some G.Skill 3600 DDR4 fir $59.

They were killing it today.

[whymauri]

I'm not surprised. The Ryzen line is the best line of consumer CPUs I've seen since Sandy Bridge.

[VMG]

why isn't it priced higher then?

[goatherders]

The way your sentence reads is that Sandy Bridge is better. I suspect you mean that the advancement with this generation is as significant as any since sandy bridge. Can you clarify?

[sb057]

Not surprising given how little supply there seems to have been. Even relatively major outlets like PC Perspective didn't get a review sample.

[needle0]

That and the Japanese PC-building scene has become quite tiny nowadays.

[exikyut]

Question: I can drop Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Arch, etc onto a Core series whatever and get class-leading KMS/DRM graphics acceleration the moment the kernel is running, long before X11/Wayland start. So bootup is reasonably seamless, no flickering etc. Basic 3D works. WebGL is getting there.

And thanks to DRM, I can play around with alternative environments that talk directly to the kernel without X being involved.

So... if I get an AMD APU... how will the hacker/tinkerer experience compare?

[glandium]

For perspective: Tsukumo "honten" had 20, Tsukumo eX had 35, Tsukumo Nagoya had 15. 3960x and 3970x had scarcer availability.

I also just saw on Twitter that some of the shops have new 3950x available.

[darkteflon]

Haven’t heard of Tsukumo before - do you recommend them over buying on Amazon?

[umvi]

I picked up a Ryzen 7 2700X for $159 on Black Friday. Unbelievable cost:power ratio

[m0zg]

Sold out on Newegg and Amazon too, as far as I can tell. Looks like AMD did not quite expect this kind of uptake on what is now their "top of the line but reasonably priced" CPU.

[corporateslave5]

Intel stock is all time high, short? Or the market doesn’t think amd will cut into their profits....

[bitL]

- EPYCs market share is around 3%

- Intel makes in a few weeks as much as AMD in the whole year

- AMD doesn't own fabs and can't saturate market (as seen with 39XXx shortages)

[rythie]

Blackberry's stock price went up 10x in the year after the first iPhone was released.

[umvi]

Seems like everything is at an all time high

[foota]

Maybe people expect that growth in TAM will outweigh loss from decrease in market share? Intel also has areas other than CPUs which might supplement CPU profits.

[paulie_a]

AMD has always been the stock markets whipping boy with shorts. Yet it stock price still continues to grow.

[chrisseaton]

I'm betting Intel will just dust off tech they have already developed but didn't need to put into products due to lack of competition, and will be back on top soon.

[ece]

I got an email from Amazon saying the 3950X was back in stock, 25 mins later, it was all gone when I actually checked.

AMD will need to provide some retail guidance for the holiday season, maybe widespread availability won't happen until Jan/Feb..

[iamspoilt]

As a segue, is this a good time to buy AMD stocks?

[shmerl]

Ryzen 9 series seem to be sold out pretty quickly everywhere. They go like hot cakes. Same thing happened with Ryzen 9 3900X after release. Only relatively recently it became easier to buy it, and it's still often sold out.

[tanilama]

Damn too late to buy AMD stocks?

It is unbelievable to me, the level of inaction from Intel's managements just sit there all these years with all the advantage and cash they have had, and watch all of these washed away.

Their response? More inaction.

Time to change.

[flxy]

There was some action from Intel. They slashed the prices of their 10000 series by up to 50% to be able to compete in terms of price. But those CPUs are just refreshes of their 9000 series so it didn't do much in terms of improving performance. From what I've heard throughout the hardware reviewer scene it also gained them a lot of flack because they announced it a day before the new Threadrippers I think. In terms of new, much more powerful hardware Intel can't do much for now. Maybe 2020 or 2021. By which time AMD will have Zen 3 which promises some more big improvements.

[imajoo]

I'd say it's not so much inaction as inability to fix 10nm. By coupling architecture to process node for so long it really hosed them since they couldn't execute 10nm in a reasonable timeline.

[sireat]

The 3950X are heavily supply limited.

I do not think Baltics got a single 3950x allocated in the November. Theoretically some will be available on 19.12.

Where does one even look for 3950x in Europe?

Scan.co.uk says December 31st at the earliest.

[ForFreedom]

I am not a gamer so asking, AMD CPU better than Intel?

[unionpivo]

yes, especially if you are not a gamer.

AMD has better multi threaded performance (in some cases double that of intel).

Intel still has some lead in single threaded performance, and some vector optimizations.

So for general use case amd is better, but there are some specialized cases where intell still makes sense.

[stormbeard]

It doesn't matter if you game or not. AMD is crushing Intel on every dimension w.r.t. consumer and HEDT CPUs. Just look up the benchmarks.