A month ago, AMD launched its new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs. The R9 9900X and R9 9950X led the charge, with the R7 9700X and R5 9600X appearing as more budget-friendly options.

So, why aren’t they in our chart?

The Good News:

Normally, we would scrutinize the performance (particularly for gaming), compare that to the competition, look at power efficiency, and—most importantly—check the price.

We will not get into all of that in detail for the Ryzen 9000 series today, but in a nutshell (when compared to the previous AMD generation): great power consumption efficiency upgrade, smaller single-threaded performance upgrade.

The Weird News:

Why did we not add (or explicitly mention) these new Ryzen 9000 CPUs yet?

Well, for some unknown reason, AMD launched these processors before the launch of fully-compatible-out-of-the-box X870-chipset motherboards.

As such, if you want these CPUs now, you can buy an older X670 (or any AMD 600-series AM5 mobo) and update the BIOS to be compatible… Updating the BIOS typically means having access to a compatible CPU, or that you specifically choose a motherboard that can have its BIOS updated without a CPU.

But our guide is meant to ensure out-of-the-box compatibility, and that means that relying on a BIOS update for compatibility is against what we stand for. For us, we do not assume that you already own a compatible AM5 CPU; Maybe you are a first-time desktop buyer, or you are upgrading from AM4 or Intel. As such, if we cannot ensure out-of-the-box compatibility, we will not recommend a product.

The Future News:

So does that mean that we will never recommend the Ryzen 9000 series? No! The AMD 9000 series are perfectly fine CPUs, and this is just an issue of delayed timing. The fully compatible 800-series motherboards were announced, and are barely 2 weeks away from launch.

The moment that these fully-compatible motherboards are available for purchase, we will be looking at the possible options and switching to them if they are logical.