The "new" AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT CPU was officially announced today along with the Ryzen 7 3800XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT. While these chips are interesting, they are not necessarily processors that I would recommend PC gamers purchase today.

However, there was an interesting snippet from the Ryzen XT press conference. Instead of comparing these three new chips to the latest 10th generation Comet Lake processors that had just been announced at the time, the slides showed a comparison to the 9900K, 9700K, and 9600K. Yes, the previous generation.

AMD was quite open about the reason for this, which was more than a little surprising, because AMD couldn't find Intel's new chips in stock, and the company had to make a decision on the new chips because they were not available in the market. Yes, that's right, AMD is going to buy Intel chips for comparison testing. Yes, that's right. But this time they couldn't.

Now, to be fair to Intel, the Ryzen XT launch event was held in mid-June; AMD may have been able to get some chips, but probably not all of them.

Is this still the case today? It is fair to say that finding specific chips is still difficult even today. The top-end Core i9 10900K is not in stock anywhere you look, while some of the more affordable Core i3 chips have to be purchased at a higher price.

A quick look around shows that they are currently in stock, albeit not perfect, and a quick check on Newegg and elsewhere reveals the following:

The Core i5 10400 is the only chip that meets Intel's recommended retail price, but it too is limited to one per person It is also limited to one per customer. Like many manufacturers, Amazon also has varying availability; Newegg seems to be in a better place than others.

This makes it frustrating to buy certain Intel 10th generation Core CPUs, while AMD's Ryzen chips are enjoying great price drops right now. These price drops are not driven by AMD, and with the official launch of the Ryzen XT series today, AMD is keen to point out that it has not changed its recommended prices at all.

But here's the problem for AMD. That is that the new chips will be launched at a relatively high price compared to the chips that came before them. Let's go back to Newegg again:

In other words, while AMD's pricing for slightly older chips is impressive, there is still a limit to the number of chips that can be purchased. In most cases, this is not a particular problem, but as we pointed out with Intel's chips, it is fair to point this out. [That said, AMD has struck a deal with Ubisoft to bundle the not-yet-released "Assassin's Creed Valhalla" with its high-end chips. Below is a list of chips that will get the next installment:

The price difference is still significant, but the new XT variants are not that different, with the Ryzen 3600XT and 3900XT boasting a boost clock improvement of 100 MHz and the 3800XT 200 MHz. Also, the 3900XT and 3800XT no longer ship with the Wraith cooler, so even with the free software, the value considerations shift considerably.