AMD Blames Intel's 'Horrible' Arrow Lake CPUs For Ryzen 7 9800X3D Shortage

As we detailed in our Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, AMD's first consumer Zen 5 chip with 3D V-Cache is a beastly slice of silicon that's an ideal choice to build a gaming PC around. The market agrees, as evidenced by the chip frequently being sold out at places like Amazon and Best Buy. In candid remarks shared at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), however, AMD offered up another explanation for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D: it's Intel's fault.

During a round table discussion with reporters, AMD's David McAfee, corporate vice president and general manager of Ryzen, and Frank Azor, chief architect of gaming solutions and marketing (also the co-founder of Alienware), shared some interesting remarks about the struggle to supply enough Ryzen 7 9800X3D chips to meet what's so far been an insatiable demand.

"Put it this way. We knew we built a great part. We didn't know the competitor had built such a horrible one. So the demand has been a little bit higher than we had originally forecasted," Azor said in response to why the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is so often sold out.

It's pretty rare for companies to take public shots at one another in this fashion. Azor didn't call out Intel by name, but there's no mistaking which competitor he was referring to, and which architecture—Intel and its rocky Arrow Lake launch.

Incidentally, Intel has also been candid about Arrow Lake. Back in November, we had Intel's Robert Hallock, vice president and general manager, client AI and technical marketing, as a guest on our 2.5 Geeks podcast. At the time, Hallock said Intel "identified a series of multifactor issues at the OS level [and] at the BIOS level" that led to performance by reviewers not be what the company expected to see. He also said Intel was working feverishly on a series of fixes.

"The launch just didn't go as planned. That has been a humbling lesson for all of us, inspiring a fairly large response internally to get to the bottom of what happened and to fix it," Hallock said at the time.

Then in mid-December, we touched based with Hallock again, and Intel subsequently detailed inbound performance fixes for Arrow Lake.

Now a few weeks later, AMD is pinning the Ryzen 7 9800X3D shortage on Arrow Lake, though perhaps not entirely. During the round table discussion, McAfee called the demand for the 9800X3D "unprecedented" and noted that AMD has been ramping its manufacturing capacity, both for 9800X3D and also the Ryzen 7000X3D series.

"It’s longer than a quarter to really ramp, you know, the output of those products, and so we’re working very, very hard to catch up with demand. "I think as we go through the first half of this year, you’ll see us continue to increase output of X3D," McAfee said.

"You know there’s no secret, X3D has become a far more important part of our CPU portfolio than I think we, any of us, would have predicted a year ago. And I think that trend will continue into the future, and we are ramping capacity to ensure we catch up with that demand as long as consumers want those X3D parts," McAfee added.

According to McAfee, the process of starting a wafer and getting a product out of it typically takes around 12-13 weeks. Add 3D V-Cache to the mix and the lead time increases.

Speaking of which, more 3D V-Cache models are coming. During CES, AMD announced an onslaught of processors (both desktop and mobile), including the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D. It also unveiled a lineup of "Fire Range" processors that will optionally bring 3D V-Cache over to laptops (by way of the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D).