Reports are circulating that AMD has reduced production of its latest Ryzen processor series "amid the downturn in the PC market and the overall unpopularity of the AM5 platform."

We are accustomed to gaming hardware disappearing from retail stores the moment it is released. Whether it's the new Nvidia RTX 4090 (open in new tab) or the latest graphics cards like AMD's RX 6800 XT (open in new tab) or a new gaming console. We expect inventory to be flooded and shelves emptied in minutes, making it difficult to purchase the latest and greatest new tech stuff.

Unless we are talking about the new AMD Zen 4-based Ryzen processors. New AMD CPUs have been launched relatively recently, and we've been pretty positive about both the Ryzen 9 7950X (open in new tab) and Ryzen 7 7700X (open in new tab) chips. But unlike so many new technology announcements since the pandemic began, it's surprisingly easy to buy the new 5nm Ryzen in whatever flavor you most desire.

PC sales are down this year, and AMD's Q3 earnings report last week showed a $1.1 billion shortfall in sales and how that affected the company's bottom line (open in new tab) As both CPU and GPU generations approach the end, in terms of gaming hardware As is to be expected in terms of gaming hardware, total PC sales are also down, and are now below pre-pandemic levels.

AMD cites the weak PC market and large product inventories as reasons for the missed earnings, and WCCFTech (opens in new tab) notes that it is against this backdrop that the company is cutting production of its Ryzen 7000 series.

The article also suggests that this is also happening because of the "overall unpopularity of the AM5 platform. One could argue that, given the abundance of chips on the shelves.

However, with the overall PC market slowing down, and with large amounts of inventory left in the channel, it would be a foolish company indeed to continue the same level of production without taking into account the changing hardware environment.

AMD's new processor platforms have always had a slower start than the recent Ryzen CPU launches. Not only do they need a new chip, but also a new motherboard and possibly new DDR5 memory. In other words, not many people will be upgrading from DDR5-based Alder Lake systems. Especially considering similar gaming performance.

On the other hand, a new graphics card could be an easy drop-in upgrade that would benefit virtually any system immediately. This opens up a much wider range of first day purchases. If you are switching to an entirely new platform, you are more likely to wait for a specific time to upgrade, not just at release.

Besides, there is a whole new Intel CPU release coming up with Raptor Lake.

Therefore, it is perhaps a bit disingenuous to look at the first day sales of such a setup; whether AMD will see their new chips struggle when Raptor Lake is released, and whether AMD will change the pricing of their competitive chips accordingly. Whether or not. After all, money talks, and the Zen 4 pricing change may say a lot.