AMD accuses Intel’s Arrow Lake of being a ‘horrible’ product and implies a lack of options for consumers has caused the Ryzen 7 9800X3D shortage

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the current best CPU for gaming, launched just a little while ago and its impeccable performance has already caused shortages. AMD says the level of demand is partially down to Intel’s launch of the rather underwhelming Arrow Lake.

As told to a writer at Tom’s Hardware in a roundtable interview with AMD executives, AMD blames part of the severe demand for its current best chip on Intel launching a mediocre product in the hotly anticipated Arrow Lake. Okay, AMD put it a bit more harshly than that, saying “We knew we built a great part. We didn’t know the competitor had built a horrible one.”

On this, we tested out both the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and Intel Core Ultra 5 245K back in October and they are certainly underwhelming, though we wouldn’t quite call them horrible.

The former CPU is great for productivity needs but beaten out in gaming by cheaper, older AMD CPUs. The latter is a strong budget choice for content creation, but the use-case is far more niche than one might expect from a competitive Intel CPU.

However, a ‘just okay’ launch of a hotly anticipated set of CPUs, especially when you consider the CPU instabilities that still negatively impact the consumer view on Intel, these chips needed to be better to compete with AMD, which is currently performing really well.

Historically known for making the best CPUs in the world, Intel has had a bit of a fall from grace and the newest CPUs aren’t helping it.

AMD itself didn’t have a flawless showing at CES. Early Radeon RX 9070 benchmarks are certainly positive but the cards themselves weren’t given a release date, benchmark results, or even price point. We can say the fps in some games looks healthy but won’t be able to say much more until we know what we’re comparing it to in the market.

It isn’t yet clear when the 9800X3D will trickle into the normal market at its intended price point but it’s a good chip, and one worth waiting for. I recently upgraded to the previous chip, the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D in my own personal rig and can happily state it still performs excellently.

Hopefully, Intel can start to claw its way out of the hole it has dug itself, even just so it’s easier to get ahold of the best CPUs.