When the Ryzen 5000 series CPUs hit retail store shelves last week, those who managed to get their hands on one should pat themselves on the back. However, many people were unable to get their hands on one before the stock was completely gone from the store shelves, raising the question, "Was this a paper launch?"

This reminds us of a September Twitter post by a VR developer who was frustrated that he could not purchase the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card at launch. He stated in the same tweet, "According to $10, AMD would be paper launch too."

Azor responded jokingly, "I look forward to taking your $10," accompanied by a smiley face and a bet. I say "half-jokingly" because I don't believe Azor actually intended to accept Hamilton from anyone on Twitter, but he has effectively stated publicly that the Radeon RX 6000 series will never be released in paper form.

Now, over the weekend someone dug up a Twitter thread calling the Ryzen 5900X CPU a paper launch, and Azor responded to that Twitter post, saying that the Radeon RX 6000 series would not be released in paper form, and that the Radeon RX 6000 series would be released in paper form.

"There is a big difference between a 'paper launch' and shipping a large number of units but having demand exceed supply," Azor said.

Merriam-Webster does not define the term "paper launch," but it is generally used to describe a product launch in extremely thin volume for the purpose of saying the product has been launched. In this case, AMD can legitimately claim to have launched the fastest consumer CPU lineup in history, regardless of whether it is actually available at MSRP (and it is not available right now).

In other words, Azor is claiming that AMD shipped a "large number of units," but still not enough to meet demand, as opposed to shipping a small number of Zen 3 CPUs.

And what about the bot issue? In another tweet, Azor responded to a question about whether AMD did anything to avoid bots at the Zen 3 launch.

"Yes, we made a strong effort and were successful in many cases. It is a battle that is never completely won, but I applaud the efforts of our team and our partners in this round. We continue to learn and adapt with each launch. We want our products to get into the hands of their intended users," Azor said.

He also noted that AMD is "analyzing what worked and what didn't from various recent launches" and will apply these lessons to future retail launches of the Radeon RX 6000 series.

From what we have heard at Nvidia, the Green Team claims that the GeForce RTX 30 series was also far from a paper launch; after the GeForce RTX 3080 launch, Nvidia said demand was "truly unprecedented" and why it sold out so quickly.

"The response to our Nvidia Ampere architecture GPUs has been extraordinary, driving interest to heights we have never experienced before. Four times more unique visitors to our website, 10 times more peak web requests per second, and more than 15 times more outclicks to our partner pages. [I have a feeling that the Radeon RX 6000 series will be similarly successful. Because if there's a catchphrase for the technology sector in 2020, it's "out of stock": the Radeon RX 6800 XT ($649) and 6800 ($579) will both be available on November 18, and the 6900 XT ($999) on December 8.