Yesterday, there was bad news for those already excited for the arrival of AMD processors with new Zen 5 cores, when the company announced that it had found some problems with the first series of Ryzen 9000 processors that were already heading to stores, and proceeded to delay the launch. AMD didn’t say anything about the type of issues in the initial statement, but some additional information has since surfaced that should hopefully provide some reassurance. We also already know when you’ll be able to read reviews.
There have been various rumors about the causes of the delay – for example, that some CPUs for some reason showed significant deviations in performance, or that there was an issue with the memory during overclocked DDR5-8000 speeds (via EXPO profiles), there was a rumor that some CPUs need to replace the IO chiplet It is difficult to say whether these assumptions revolve around some real basis, or whether it is just speculation or somehow distorted news.
But AMD later officially supplied some details. The company directly told the Tom’s Hardware website that the problems it discovered during the inspection were nothing that would require a revision or respin of the silicon itself, so it shouldn’t be a problem of the design itself, nor of the chip manufacturing at TSMC.
The problems were allegedly (again, this is the information he got from AMD Tom’s Hardware) caused at the level of encapsulation (packaging), that is, when assembling the silicon together on the substrate. The problem was reportedly discovered while testing the processor’s encapsulation process. Or more precisely, some flaws in the output testing were probably found and additional checks were added to catch the encapsulation problems at issue here. In theory, it could also be something essentially unrelated to the design of the Ryzen 9000, such as an imperfect application of solder used to transfer heat from the chip to its metal cover (heat spreader).
At the same time, this incident will not lead to any changes to the specifications. The problem should be purely in the individual deviations of the processors. These should be solved by modified testing of processors during production, and the company will send back the first series that were withdrawn from distribution for testing. The affected batches of Ryzen 9000 will therefore not be left in the vinegar (except for the pieces that really do not pass through the modified sieve of tests). It’s hopefully a sign that this issue won’t really plague the Ryzen 9000 processors long term.
AMD is said to be trying to recall all potentially affected processors for retesting to ensure no units with the problem appear on the market. It should also apply to the OEM market, i.e. processors supplied to computer manufacturers in complete sets.
That something slips through the cracks, but it’s probably not completely out of the question. There have already been reports that here and there it was possible to get a processor before the start of sales (unless, of course, it was a non-sale sample for testing). Especially in such gray cases, it is possible that some small number of pieces avoid being forced to return to the factory. Hopefully these are just isolated specimens and won’t matter on a global scale.
When will the reviews come out?
The release delay will also affect reviews, as even media samples are apparently affected by this forced exchange. AMD has at least clarified when reviews can be expected. Their release dates will be a day before the very start of sales, so interested parties will have some time to go through the tests and decide whether to buy a Zen 5.
This will apply to both waves of processors separately. This means that only the Ryzen 5 9600X with six cores and the Ryzen 7 9700X with eight cores will be available for review at first – these are the cheaper models with only one CPU chiplet, they will go on sale on 8/8 and the reviews will be out 7. 8.probably at 3:00 p.m.
More powerful processors with two CPU chiplets, the Ryzen 9 9900X with 12 cores and the Ryzen 9 9950X with 16 cores, will be released on 8/15 and reviews will be released a day earlier in 14. 8. (on Wednesday). Unfortunately, it will not be possible to compare cheaper models with what the high-end will offer right away. So it will not be clear whether, for example, dual-chip processors will not have significantly different performance in games. Although in this case, the behavior of the corresponding models of the Ryzen 7000X generation could probably serve as a guide, given that, except for the processor core itself, the processors use almost the same “uncore” infrastructure.
Source: Tom’s Hardware, VideoCardz
Source: www.cnews.cz
