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>Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs.

You're confusing bandwidth and latency. Ryzen 3000 launched a month ago, the 3900x outperformed expectations, so the initial shipments sold out faster than expected. You can't magic up stock out of thin air, so there's an inevitable lag between retailers reporting unusually high demand and AMD being able to deliver sufficient stock.

The bandwidth question is much more important and bodes very poorly for Intel. TSMC's 7nm process is stable, providing excellent yields and has plenty of available capacity; they're already in risk production for 5nm, which is expected to free up substantial capacity at 7nm/7nm+ into 2020. Intel's 10nm has been a complete debacle and (despite the Ice Lake launch) is still blighted with sub-par yields.

> TSMC's 7nm process is stable, providing excellent yields and has plenty of available capacity

Yields in terms of getting lots of operational dies, sure, but one of the underlying problems here is chip quality. They have lots of chiplets but most of those chiplets are not fast enough to hit the clocks advertised for the 3900X.

In fact, even a lot of the chiplets sold as 3900X are not fast enough to hit the clocks advertised for 3900X, as well as elsewhere throughout their range. There are a lot of people finding their chips only boost to 50-200 MHz less than the advertised frequency of the chip.

Essentially, the boost algorithm now takes chip quality into account when determining how high it will boost. And most of the chips have silicon quality that is too poor to hit the advertised clocks, even on a single core, even under ideal cooling, etc etc.

Thus, AMD has the somewhat dubious honor of being the first company to make the silicon lottery apply not just to overclocking, but to their stock clocks as well. They really wasted no time before shifting to anti-consumer bullshit of their own; all they had to do was advertise the chips as being 200 MHz lower and everyone would have been happy, but they wanted to advertise clocks the chips couldn't hit.

And again, the underlying problem is chip quality - a lot of these chiplets can't boost to 4.3 or 4.4 GHz let alone 4.7. AMD simply can't yield enough 4.7 GHz chiplets to go around, even if the chiplets are nominally functional. The process may be "stable and providing excellent yields" but it's not stable and well yielding enough to meet AMD's expectations.

That's a major reason they're now introducing 3700 and 3900 non-X variations - that will allow them to reduce clocks and satisfy demand a bit better.

>a lot of the chiplets sold as 3900X are not fast enough to hit the clocks advertised for 3900X

Do you have some sort of source for this claim?

every forum pretty much. If you have been interested in getting one, and following along with the launch this is not a controversial statement. It's not 100% sure its the chips fault though, bios issues are still running rampant nearly 5 weeks later, and each new bios is changing performance significantly. It will take a while before everyone knows exactly where they stand.

Forums are not reputable sources unless it is insiders leaking info that can be verified through other means.

They might not be definitive sources, but they can definitely be the canary that triggers an investigation by somebody more authoritative.

As it stands, this mine has some dead canaries.

claim:

> ...but one of the underlying problems here is chip quality

supposed justification:

> ...every forum pretty much

That's hearsay not actual justification. And intel has a reputation for dirty play.

The justification was for the statement that chips aren't hitting their clocks. That is not a controversial statement.

der8auer has done extensive testing on multiple CPUs (he had 12 samples) and has discussed the topic.

https://youtu.be/WXbCdGENp5I?t=119

A lot of reviewers have noted similar things, but often are working with singular samples and didn't want to make too much of a stink without more data, but the problem is widespread. Out of all of der8auer's CPUs, only one hit its advertised boost clocks, and it was one of the lower-end CPUs with a less ambitious target to hit.

It may be a problem with early AGESA firmware, and silicon quality will definitely go up over time, but at least at this point in time AMD has certainly falsely advertised the clocks these CPUs are capable of achieving.

Not reaching advertised boost clocks seem to be related to newer AGESA releases from AMD to motherboard vendors, so I wouldn't blame it on chip quality just yet. These contain bugfixes (RdRand for example) and other changes, but has impacted boost clocks. People running AGESA 1.0.0.2 report reaching boost clocks easily (sustained in single-core tests), while I and others running later releases have issues.

New architecture, new chipset, bound to have some release issues. Intel is on its second or third refresh of their Skylake architecture from 2015, all ironed out.

> Intel is on its second or third refresh of their Skylake architecture from 2015, all ironed out.

More like the fourth, I think.

I've seen plenty of people having problems on older AGESA too. I've seen some people actually have higher performance on newer AGESA. It all depends on your particular sample and setup and how it fits into the boost criteria. Silicon quality still plays a massive role.

So to be clear, older AGESA isn't a magic bullet that is letting all chips "easily hit their rated boost clocks".

It could be cleaned up somewhat in future AGESA releases, and silicon quality will definitely go up over time.

Both my comment and the one I responded to specified "At the moment" which is fairly specific and implies that it's subject to change. Of course things will be different in 3+ months and bugs and supply chain issues get ironed out. The question that matters a lot more is whether Intel will be able to respond adequately to AMD's offerings.

It is unclear whether Intel is truly disadvantaged in throughput for any appreciable length of time. We've seen what happened to Intel after the disastrous Prescott release years ago - they worked on the Core architecture and its follow-up Core 2 that put AMD in a pretty serious rut for the past decade. Your point of the 10nm offering launching and _still_ being lackluster is the big, big problem for Intel for short-term competitiveness.

> I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices.

I'm experiencing the opposite. There has been so many deals on 3900X that I have to constantly tell myself I don't need an upgrade.

Same here. Find nearest Micro Center, see wonderful deal, spend more than you came in looking to spend, repeat. Unless you don’t have any kind of physical computer store near you, I don’t see why buying it on eBay would be useful.

Damn, I have been desperately trying to get one since launch. Think the USA is getting them all, and the rest of the world is getting screwed. I paid on launch day, my store is getting 2 3900x's this month, they have 78 people who have paid in full and are waiting.

Arbitrage to the rescue?

I am in Europe and a reputable local online shop shows that i can get it after a week for 690$ but that is including VAT (575$ without VAT).

I am in Europe and a (previously?) Reputable online retailer showed me the same 2 weeks ago, but 1 week ago ( 2 days after the expected ship time) updated the expected time to a month and just said they didn't get the shipment expected, deal with it

My original comment was quite ignorant, then, and I apologize for it. They’ve got quite a few at my Micro Center for $449 if you purchase a compatible motherboard, so I was (incorrectly) assuming that this applied to the rest of the world too.

I am genuinely intrigued. I've been going to my local Microcenters in the DC VA area for weeks now and they said they have gotten ZERO shipments in since release day of the 3900X and have a couple 3700X maybe on shelves.

This doesn't necessarily completely invalidate my point though - distribution by AMD is clearly needing some work when one region is drowning in 3900X processors and a very wealthy metro area has none in retail channels.

Same. The Nutley St. location sold out on the first day and hasn't been any since.

Odd. I was in Microcenter on Tuesday and they had a few 3900X's in the case. When I was there closer to launch, there weren't any and they told me that people would come in and ask for them before they even hit the shelf.

Which Microcenter location though? The Fairfax one the employee in the section on Sunday said the two boxes in the floor cases were 3700X and not 3900X because the boxes for the 3900X are larger.

Tustin, CA

Consumer doesn’t really matter. Pretty much any IT admin I know is ordering one directly through wholesalers. I’m actually surprised people physically go to stores anymore.

Or may be ( cough ) someone in your local Microcenters hasn't been ordering to fulfil those stocks.

This strategy is quite widely used in many other industry as well.

Although given it has only been launched for less than a month and demand is actually through the roof ( I have been seen reviews being so Pro AMD, even in the AMD Athon 64 days ). So I think it is simply supply is a little tight while TSMC are working hard.

Where have you been able to find them? PCPartPicker hasn't exactly shown great availability on the 3900X so far [0], Amazon is full of scalping [1] and Ebay... Well, $700+ is what I'm seeing there. This is the CPU that'll probably be powering my next build, so if you've got a source close to MSRP I'd love to hear it!

0: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/tLCD4D/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-36...

1: https://smile.amazon.com/AMD-Ryzen-3900X-24-Thread-Processor...

Check out the buildapcsales subreddit, that's where I consistently find the biggest discounts.

I don't care about getting it at a discount, I care about getting it at MSRP...

Then check out the discounted deal and mail them you'd like to pay extra

Good Morning Sir,

I hope this letter finds you in good health. Since I've seen that you are offering AMD 3900X at a discount, I'd like to inform you that I am not like those pleebs and would therefore like you to pay in full MSRP. Please let me know where I can send the goats.

I have the honor to be your obedient customer.

N. Pleeb

Funny enough, I had two buyers saying pretty much this. "I'll pay 49" on a £35 item. Why? Because apparently that's "what it's worth". I appreciate the thought, but it just looks insanely suspicious...

The point was that there aren't going to be any 'sales' on this for at least a few months...

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1485447-REG/amd_100_1...

B&H Photo is a reputable site, and they are advertising the 3900X at $499. Now whether they will ship anytime soon...

Eh, it just came out last month, give them some time.

In fact Intel had supply issues with their 9900K at launch too, for at least a month or two they were often out of stock at the major retailers. If getting ahold of a 3900X is still tough by next month then maybe that's cause for concern.

I would agree that Intel is more mature on the BIOS side of things. AMD usually has launch issues that need to be ironed out with UEFI updates. But, if the past few launches are any indication, they've always got things fixed.

>If getting ahold of a 3900X is still tough by next month then maybe that's cause for concern.

Next month, the 3950X will be the one hard to get a hold of.

What? Intel are currently in the midst of a massive ongoing supply shortage. Lack of ability to keep up with demand is at least as much an Intel problem as it is an AMD one at this point.

Intel also has lower yields than amd which doesn’t exactly help intel our much.

AMD is literally facing unprecedented demand. There's no hype here. This is the real thing. Shortages are to be expected, but you can assume that AMD is smart enough to route their production such that they get the highest return -- e.g. to recurring enterprise customers.

The way you avoid both demand issues and BIOS issues is to purchase 2-3 months after launch.

These chips launched on schedule on 7/7, almost exactly one month ago. If you've been exasperatedly waiting for months it's not AMD's fault.

The "literally no reason" part is okay, what you need to do is adjust "at the moment" to "once we're out of the launch window".

you dont have a cpu yet but the bios issue is super annoying?

i have one and there is no bios issue. i got the cheapest x570 mobo and everything is great

To add to this, I've got a B350 Asus board (B350 Prime Plus). Updated the bios and my 3700x works great!