Based on an internal AMD report, we have managed to learn that the company is planning to lower its Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" CPU production plan.
PC Market Decline & Poor Reception of AM5 Platform? AMD Plans To Lower Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" CPU Production Plan
The report that cites AMD's internal management suggests that the red team is planning to lower its production of the Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" CPUs amidst a decline in the PC market and the overall poor reception of the AM5 platform. While the AM5 platform is still fresh, AMD anticipated that it would manage to attract users' interests with a strong slew of features such as support for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technologies however that in return has raised the prices of the motherboards and even the entry-level B650 series that was recently introduced has failed to hit the $125 US which AMD had promised.
The report also states that enthusiasts are what's keeping the AM5 floating at the moment and the Ryzen 9 7900X has become the top/best seller with its sales reportedly being the highest amongst the entirety of the Zen 4 lineup. The $549 US chip seems to be far more attractive than the Ryzen 7 7700X ($399 US) and the Ryzen 5 7600X ($299 US). This statistic isn't based on retailer-specific sales but instead on global shipments and retail numbers.
The reason for this is that most entry-level buyers can just drop in and upgrade to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D on the existing AM4 platform if they want better gaming performance. For them, the 8 Zen 3 cores still offer decent multi-threading performance while the 3D V-Cache accelerators game performance beyond the 12900K. Now, there has been an increase in talks regarding a possible X3D launch simultaneously on the AM4 and AM5 platforms. AMD is already readying itself for the Ryzen 7000 3D V-Cache launch which should be announced by CES 2023 but whether AM4 gets a new X3D option remains to be seen.
Even without X3D options, the AM4 lineup has plenty of juice with discounted 6, 8, 12, 16 core chips that offer far more value than anything on the AM5 platform.
The disparity between the AM4 and AM5 sales can be seen in statistics shared by TechEpiphany:
🔥 Mainboard Retail Sales Week 40 (mf)
AMD: 1970 units sold, 55.65%, ASP: 146.79
Intel: 1570, 44.35%, ASP: 214.56AMD revenue: 289'171, 46.19%
Intel: 336'860.1, 53.81%Bestseller: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus
(AM5: Gigabyte X670 AORUS ELITE AX)#AMD #Intel #AMDRyzen pic.twitter.com/HHVpa8acxL— TechEpiphany (@TechEpiphany) October 9, 2022
🔥 CPU Retail Sales Week 40 (mf)
Total: 5080 (📉-2.3%)
AMD: 3620 (📉-7.65%) units sold, 71.26% (📉-3.76%), ASP: 289.84
Intel: 1460, 28.74%, ASP: 278.45
AMD revenue: 1'049'207.1, 72.07%
Intel: 406'540.7, 27.93%RT if you like my work.🍻#AMD #Intel #AMDRyzen pic.twitter.com/exu8U7GoI2
— TechEpiphany (@TechEpiphany) October 9, 2022
Currently, almost all major retailers have plenty of AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs and several AM5 boards in stock so unless there's a huge demand for them, there's no need to keep the production going on at full capacity. As the market gets better in 2023 and demand starts going back up, AMD may simply resume production to normal however by that time, the normal chips will have to share some of that capacity with other Zen 4 lines such as X3D and mobility parts. Not to mention the Zen 4 EPYC CPUs.
