AMD keeps botching their product launches, and Zen 5 is just another example in a string of releases over the last two years that range from disappointing to downright embarrassing. There's a concerning trend of AMD shooting themselves in the foot, misleading potential customers through questionable marketing, and making simple blunders that, if avoided, would have led to a much better experience for buyers.
In today's column, I'm going to run through AMD's recent poor launches and give my thoughts on what's happened, what's gone wrong, and what AMD can do to improve. The goal, I guess, is to expose the problem and publicly push for change because better launches with more accurate marketing mean that you, the consumer, end up with better products on day one. And better products that aren't disappointing or underwhelming to begin with are better for the entire PC ecosystem.
What a Good Launch Looks Like
I want to start with what a good launch looks like. The most recent example I think of from AMD is the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. This CPU was launched in January 2023, and if we go back and look at the announcement, they talk about this part being the ultimate gaming processor. They showed performance figures that were between 21% and 30% faster than the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and ended up releasing the part for $450. An exciting product announcement given the 5800X3D was one of the most popular CPUs on the market at the time.
Fast forward to our day-one review later that April, and we found that the 7800X3D was indeed one of the fastest gaming CPUs on the market, narrowly outperforming the Core i9-13900K. We also confirmed that it was 24% faster on average compared to the 5800X3D, validating AMD's marketing claims. Ultimately in our review, we said the value of this part can't be beaten among high-end parts. Accurate marketing set expectations appropriately, they were met in third-party benchmarks, the price is great in the current market, everyone is happy, and the CPU starts off as a huge success.
Zen 4 Was Also Pretty Good
The Zen 4 product launch wasn't quite as smooth due to high motherboard and memory prices at the time, and some of the parts weren't amazing value – but at the very least, AMD set expectations well at the announcement.
They claimed Ryzen 7000 offered up to 29% more single-core performance versus Ryzen 5000. We found that was accurate. They advertised substantial multi-core gains, including up to a 57% lead for the 7950X over the Core i9-12900K – in some workloads like Blender, that was accurate.
Some of the gaming performance numbers were a little optimistic compared to what we found, but not that far off, especially given we tested with faster memory. Companies are always going to show their products in the best possible light, but as long as the claims made are not misleading to customers, the exact percentages being a bit different is acceptable.
Bad Launches: Radeon 7900 XTX and 7900 XT
Where AMD began to falter with launches was with the Radeon 7000 series. Almost every product in that RDNA3 lineup had some sort of blunder at launch, and expectations were set far too high to match the actual performance of the products.
It began with the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Back at launch, AMD claimed this part was up to 1.7x faster than the RX 6950 XT at 4K gaming, or on average 55% faster with a minimum 1.5x performance gain. When it was revealed this part would cost just $1,000, it sounded amazing, especially compared to Nvidia's RTX 4090 that was set at $1,600. These performance slides suggested that, at least for rasterization, performance would be roughly around that of the 4090.
But when we reviewed the GPU, we found that it was just 35% faster than the 6950 XT at 4K across a 16-game sample, falling well short of the RTX 4090 and being more of an RTX 4080 competitor.
At the time, AMD suggested to us this discrepancy was because our 6950 XT was "too fast," which is quite a funny thing to say about your own product. Ultimately, Steve described this GPU as underwhelming and overhyped.
If expectations weren't set at a huge 1.5 to 1.7 times performance advantage generation over generation, the initial reception to this product could have been better. It wasn't amazingly priced, but it was competitive against the RTX 4080. Much could have been made about its price-to-performance ratio at the high end and being the fastest card below $1,000, but instead, AMD decided to exaggerate the performance claims, and this led to prospective buyers feeling disappointed when the final data came in. Avoidable to some degree if expectations were accurately set at launch.
To make matters worse, the other RDNA 3 launch GPU was a catastrophe. The Radeon 7900 XT never made sense at $900, even looking at AMD's own launch presentation. While AMD never compared the two parts in benchmarks, they clearly showed the GPU design was cut down from 96 to 84 compute units, those CUs were clocked lower, and it had a smaller memory bus. With the XT model cut down by at least 15% relative to the XTX, the XT model was never going to be able to justify its mere 10% lower price. And AMD should have known that, based on their internal testing and just the simple hardware configuration the engineers had gone with.
When we found the 7900 XT was 17% slower than the 7900 XTX on average at 4K, Steve proclaimed the card was dead on arrival – and it was. No one would pay 10% less to get 17% less performance at the high end. The price was horrendous, and a huge launch fail for a card that AMD told us they expected to sell very well. They had made loads of these units. But somehow they didn't realize that a sizable hardware reduction for only a small cost saving isn't at all appealing to customers.
These two launches set the tone for AMD's RDNA3 generation. At a time when customers were desperate for good value graphics cards, having just waded through years of crap thanks to crypto miners inflating GPU prices, both of AMD's initial Radeon 7000 series GPUs were a flop. AMD overhyped the flagship card to the point it was disappointing despite offering a reasonable performance uplift, and the 7900 XT was priced out of contention.
Reviews and feedback at launch are crucial for the success of a product. If feedback is largely negative, it's hard to overcome that through price corrections and fixes later down the line. Lots of people only watch the initial reviews, make up their mind, and if the product is deemed bad at launch, they ignore it thereafter.
By the time price cuts roll in, it's too late; the hype for that product is gone, and word has already gone out that the product or even the entire product series sucks. But if the launch is a success, hype builds, word-of-mouth excitement spreads, people want the product in their hands, and that's huge for both the company and the customer. Not only are you getting a good product that's worth buying on day one, but the company also benefits from organic feedback.
All the 7900 XT required at launch was a price that actually made sense given the hardware configuration. It's not a bad card, the hardware itself isn't terrible, and we even said we could have recommended it at $800. At launch, that would have been a potentially exciting price and generated a bit of interest, but AMD couldn't help themselves and shot their own foot.
Bad Launches: Radeon 7700 XT
What's been even more bizarre about AMD's product releases is they went on to repeat this mistake with the Radeon 7700 XT. AMD announced the 7800 XT at $500 and the 7700 XT at $450, which at the time we said was too expensive.
Given the hardware configuration with a 10% cut down of the GPU core relative to the 7800 XT, along with much less memory bandwidth and lower VRAM capacity, it was very likely to be more than 10% slower at just a 10% reduction in price. Lo and behold, we found it was 16% slower for 1440p gaming, and we called it a repeat of the 7900 XT and told readers not to buy it at its launch price.
Again, AMD should have known internally that the 7700 XT's $450 asking price made absolutely no sense in their own lineup. Just one look at the specifications would have told you that, and then benchmarks would have confirmed it. Not having a coherent price structure for your own products in the same lineup is embarrassing and just confuses your customers.
... it took just three months for the 7900 XT to hit $800 (from the original $900) and three months for the 7700 XT to hit $420.
I don't know whether AMD had tunnel vision with this release and was laser-focused on pricing the 7700 XT up against the RTX 4060 Ti series, or whether they just wanted a $450 card and this was the best they had. But like with the 7900 XT, they tanked reviews and initial feedback for no reason, only to have the price drop just a few months later.
And that's not an exaggeration; it took just three months for the 7900 XT to hit $800, and three months for the 7700 XT to hit $420. Was it really worth the negative feedback and brand damage to generate a small number of sales at an inflated launch price before quickly dropping prices to around what they should have been to begin with?
Bad Launches: Radeon RX 7600
AMD botched a launch again with the Radeon RX 7600, changing the price at the last minute from $300 to $270, which had no real impact on its reception other than to screw over reviewers. It even led to some reviews being published based on the original pricing because AMD didn't adequately communicate the price drop in time.
So that was a mess that could have been avoided if AMD had some more confidence in their own price strategy and didn't have a last-minute panic when they caught wind that reviews weren't going to be good at the initial $300 price they had set.
To make matters worse, even with AMD changing tune at the final hour, their changes weren't sufficient. They went to all this effort to try and turn the tide and make reviews more positive, only to not do enough. At $270, the Radeon 7600 was barely better than it was at $300, and we pointed out this level of performance had been available at this price or better for months with existing products. That made the 7600 dead on arrival, and we said so in our review that AMD had failed again.
When many in the media pointed out that AMD had rushed to adjust pricing last minute but the card still wasn't good, it made AMD look a bit silly, and that's not great for Radeon's brand perception when they are struggling for market share and, from a company perspective, need all the wins they can get.
Had AMD properly assessed the market and understood where the RX 7600 sat among other still-available GPUs, they would have come to the conclusion that the card couldn't be priced above $250. Again, at the time, consumers were crying out for a good value mainstream graphics card, and Nvidia had just botched their own product series with the 4060 Ti 8GB. There was an opportunity there for AMD to win over some fans and create a great product for consumers, and not only did they not take that opportunity, they screwed up the launch.
Bad Launches: FSR 3 and Anti-Lag+
AMD further embarrassed themselves in the RDNA3 generation with the poorly managed and at times embarrassing launches of two key GPU features: FSR 3 and Anti-Lag+.
Let's start with FSR 3. AMD's initial mistake was announcing it way too early. AMD was clearly desperate to come up with some answer for Nvidia's DLSS frame gen tech, so they announced FSR 3 frame generation alongside the first RDNA3 products in November 2022. The actual FSR release wouldn't come until the end of September 2023, some 11 months later, but not before a great deal of frustration and speculation for current owners and prospective buyers about where FSR 3 was and why it was taking so long.
When they did launch FSR 3, they did so in the worst possible way. This was a major feature addition to their portfolio and a key technology in the competitive battle between Radeon and GeForce. So how do they launch it? Broken, and running in two games that no one cared about. Almost slid out with no fanfare.
When DLSS 3 was released, Nvidia went to the effort of making it available across a range of flagship titles, including Cyberpunk 2077, Flight Simulator, and Spider-Man Remastered. AMD launched in two games that are accurately described as flops: Immortals of Aveum and Forspoken, titles that only a tiny percentage of gamers owned. This is another launch that hurt AMD's brand perception: after GeForce pulls out the big guns debuting their tech in major games, AMD could only manage to get FSR 3 in titles no one was playing. It makes it look like Radeon GPU features are weak, ineffective, and no game developers want to use them – and I want to think AMD learned a lesson here, later debuting FSR 3.1 in a broader range of higher quality games.
But wait, the other issue with FSR 3 is that it launched broken. The implementation in the two games had frame pacing issues in a variety of configurations, which let the feature down. After all that time waiting for FSR 3 to arrive, it's not a good look for the feature to arrive below standard and not fully functional. Once again, this sets the (bad) tone: instead of excitement around a great new feature that works on loads of GPUs, the discussion is on why the feature doesn't work properly and why it launched in crap games.
It's better to launch features later in a working state so gamers get the best first impression possible, rather than start off providing the perception that Radeon isn't capable of quality – and this would be helped if the feature isn't prematurely announced. Remember, Nvidia GPU owners could use FSR 3, so if AMD wants to convince those owners that hey, Radeon actually makes good features, you need to ensure that when they try Radeon features, they actually work properly and to a good level.
Then there was the embarrassing debacle of AMD Anti-Lag+. To keep this one short, AMD released a latency-improving technology similar to Nvidia Reflex that was baked into their driver, called Anti-Lag+. In supported titles, Anti-Lag+ would inject itself into the game and look to lower latency. Injecting itself into games led to some gamers receiving anti-cheat bans in Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends, causing AMD to pull the feature entirely.
Instead of working with developers to integrate their technology like Nvidia did with Reflex, AMD tried the easier way through a driver hack of sorts, which backfired spectacularly.
Months later, Anti-Lag+ would re-emerge as "Anti-Lag 2," which basically does what AMD should have done from the start: making the feature a game-integrated technology. Hooray, the feature doesn't ban you now when you use it! Another entirely avoidable situation had they just communicated with game developers and not released half-baked features.
Bad Launches: Ryzen 5800XT and 5900XT
This rot that began in the Radeon division has more recently flowed over to the Ryzen CPU division. We exposed AMD last month for highly misleading performance graphs for the Ryzen 7 5800XT and Ryzen 9 5900XT, which we confirmed were misleading after testing those products.
For some reason, AMD used an entry-level Radeon RX 6600 GPU to compare these Zen 3 processors to Intel's 13th-gen, showing laughable results like the 5800XT being 12% faster than the 13600KF in Cyberpunk 2077. Our review shows the Core i5 part is actually ~33% faster on average when testing properly without a strong GPU limit.
This type of marketing is a needless own goal for AMD and entirely avoidable. The Ryzen 5800XT and 5900XT are not significant product launches, they don't matter at all, they're simple refreshes of existing silicon with no real price changes. In fact, in some cases like the 5800XT, the price makes absolutely no sense and no one should buy it – really, these parts don't need to exist – but not only DO they exist.
AMD decided to essentially lie about their performance, misleading customers and drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. All for what purpose? I'd suggest that more people have lost trust in AMD's ability to accurately market their products based on this debacle than have actually bought these CPUs.
Bad Launches: Zen 5
And now finally we get to Zen 5, the latest in AMD's growing collection of botched launches. This one combines all the good stuff, AMD's greatest hits: misleading marketing, poor pricing, overhyping the products, and bad communication.
AMD was placed into a tricky position with Zen 5 because the desktop CPUs in the series aren't anything amazing, definitely not compared to its predecessors. The performance uplift of these CPUs over Zen 4 in common workloads is nothing to get excited about, and in gaming, it's a very disappointing uplift. So that's a difficult product to sell. But what you don't do is hype up the product as amazing for gaming and then underdeliver and mislead customers in the process.
Let's go back to this slide from their tech day presentation (below), which shows the Ryzen 7 9700X delivering at least 4% more performance, but on average 13% more performance than the Core i7-14700K.
In our testing, we found the opposite: the 14700K is actually 6% ahead of the 9700X on average, and in just 3 of the 13 titles tested, the Zen 5 part came out ahead. We even found different results to AMD in Cyberpunk 2077. AMD also claimed that the 9700X was a couple of percentage points faster than the 7800X3D at their Tech Day event.
That sets expectations pretty high! The 7800X3D is about 20% faster than the 7700X, so that would have to mean the 9700X is at least offering a 22% improvement or thereabouts. Results that would also match up nicely with the 14700K vs 9700X claims. Instead, the 9700X is just 3% faster, falling well short of the 7800X3D. The Zen 5 isn't a couple of percentage points ahead; it's actually Zen 4 V-cache that is 17% ahead on average in our data.
So if performance isn't that impressive – and AMD knows this internally, because they confirmed to us that our results showing a small performance gain are in the ballpark of accurate – then don't make outlandish claims about performance ahead of launch. Saying nothing about how the part compares to the 7800X3D or 14700K for gaming is better than saying something that's misleading and sets expectations too high.
We can't know for sure, so this is purely my speculation, but it seems that there has been some sort of internal communication issue at AMD over the performance of Zen 5 processors between engineers, marketing, and executives. On the one hand, AMD execs can get up on stage and talk positively about performance comparisons and show great performance in graphs, but internally, some people are aware of a different story.
There's been some sort of breakdown there, whether that's incorrect information being passed between the testing labs and those putting together presentations, or marketing willfully ignoring correct data in favor of cherry-picking and misleading statements. Neither of those situations is great, and everyone needs to be on the same page so that buyers aren't being overhyped to the point where they are ultimately let down and disappointed.
This possible communication breakdown has affected other aspects of this launch, especially pricing. If the decision-makers at AMD aren't getting the right information about how a product performs, they won't set an appropriate price and will get burned when it hits the market.
For example, it makes sense to price the Ryzen 9700X at $360 if AMD was expecting this to perform better than a 14700K and 7800X3D. The 14700K is currently available for $380, so Zen 5 being slightly faster and slightly cheaper would be a reasonable, though not amazing, deal. Instead, the Intel part is faster for gaming and substantially faster in multi-core workloads, while the 9700X does get the occasional single-thread win. We can't recommend Intel right now due to the stability issues, but pricing makes more sense with the way AMD themselves compared those two parts.
Then there's the 7800X3D, which currently retails for about $370. The 9700X offering a small performance advantage for gamers and improved productivity performance at $360 would be reasonable. Not amazing, but reasonable. That price structure makes sense if what AMD was saying about 9700X vs. 7800X3D performance was true. But it's not true; the 7800X3D is faster for gaming and therefore the better buy. Similar comparisons could be made for the Ryzen 5 9600X and likely the upcoming Ryzen 9 models.
Zen 5 would be a great gaming product and more positively received if it was marketed as the cheaper, more efficient version of Zen 4 with enhancements in some productivity workloads.
And when performance doesn't come in where it needs to be, there are always moves that can be made with pricing. Zen 5 would be a great gaming product and more positively received if it was marketed as the cheaper, more efficient version of Zen 4 with enhancements in some productivity workloads. Yes, the performance uplift over the 7700X would have been disappointing, but what if the 9700X was $250 compared to the 7700X at $290? I reckon the reception would be much more positive.
There are multiple ways to achieve this, too. Price cuts for each of the models are one way, but so is adjusting the product stack. If the Ryzen 5 part now included 8 cores instead of 6 cores at $280, comparisons look more favorable. Then the Ryzen 7 part could get a core bump to 12 cores, and the Ryzen 9 could get a price drop on 16 cores so it compares with previous 12-core models. The six-core model would come in below these parts. That's one way to juice a generation that otherwise doesn't offer much else for everyday gamers and consumers – more cores in the same segment and price.
Of course, some will be quick to point out that doing this would significantly hurt AMD's margins as they'd make a lot less off each CPU sale. I'm largely talking about this from a consumer perspective, but even so, lower margins can be offset through greater sales. The launch goes better, people are more interested in Zen 5, the products are better, more sales and revenue.
AMD Needs to Improve
So I believe there's a clear pattern of AMD fumbling product launches over a decent period of time, and I'm not seeing any signs of this improving or AMD learning too many lessons. Things need to change at AMD around how they handle these launches and set expectations for customers.
Based on the outcomes we've seen and our discussions with AMD, I think AMD needs to overhaul their internal communication around products and features. Everyone needs to be on the same page about the actual performance and capabilities of products so that better decisions can be made on pricing and marketing.
There shouldn't be situations where, within AMD's own lineup and based on hardware specifications alone, pricing makes no sense, like we saw with the Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7700 XT. There should be no surprises when it comes to reviewer feedback – internal testing and mock reviews should already suggest where each product will be placed against the competition well ahead of time, so there should be no need for last-minute adjustments once review feedback comes in. I've lost count of the number of times AMD has been surprised by our feedback and planned for a completely different scenario; it just shouldn't be happening. And with accurate information distributed across AMD's internal teams, they should return to creating marketing information that's useful to consumers and not misleading, because accurate numbers can be shared.
AMD needs to apply some common sense and not drink the Kool-Aid. Benchmarking a new processor with a low-end GPU is always going to backfire when that's caught and exposed, and it will create negative press. That can easily be avoided by just… not doing that. AMD knows that isn't the right way to test hardware, so they should know better than to release that information.
There have been multiple launch fumbles that could have been avoided if AMD hadn't shot themselves in the foot for no reason. FSR 3 didn't need to be announced so early, and it shouldn't have launched in a broken state. Just wait until it's ready, announce it shortly before release, and get it into high-quality titles to set a good impression. Don't launch features that cause gamers to get banned, only to have to remove them later with your tail between your legs. Think things through a bit more, and if there's an opportunity to be taken – like the entire mainstream GPU market struggling – then seize it!
Lastly, AMD needs to have a good hard think about whether setting prices too high, copping negative feedback at launch, then lowering prices within months is a successful strategy. Are those early few sales really worth the negative impact to the brand, killing off hype and setting a bad tone? Personally, I don't think so. I think products should put their best foot forward on day one; it's better for consumers and sales.