You know that something is wrong with AMD when they can't even properly execute "far too little and far too late" correctly. I said almost two years ago that the lack of an "R5-7600X3D" was going to seriously hamper the adoption rate of the AM5 platform. I branded AMD's choice to produce Ryzen 9 X3D CPUs instead of Ryzen 5 X3D CPUs as both cynical and stupid because, at the time, the costs for AM5 motherboards and DDR5 RAM was so high that I think most people (myself included) who were already on AM4 decided to just get an R7-5800X3D and ignore AM5 because of how expensive the upgrade would be. That's what prompted the creation of the R5-5600X3D and R7-5700X3D.
When your platform is expected to have amazing longevity (an expectation created by how incredible AM4 was and still is), your business model should be to reward the early adopters because, by choosing AM5, they have essentially become a captive CPU market for as long as your platform lasts. It's the same incredibly successful business model that Sony employed with the Playstation. Don't worry about making money hand-over-fist in the beginning because once the people have invested in your platform, it makes no financial sense for them to switch until your platform is dead (and by then, hopefully, you have a new platform for them). We've seen from several members of the tech press what the gaming performance of the R5-7600X3D would be by using an R9-7900X with its non-X3D CCX disabled. That further solidified my expectation that it would've been a crushing success (crushing to Intel I mean). Now, all I can do is sit back and laugh at how AMD's R9-7900X has been the biggest failure of Zen 4. They could've made two R5-7600X3Ds for every one R9-7900X that they did make and they probably would've outsold every other CPU of that generation combined. Let's be honest here, an R7-7800X3D is essentially half of an R9-7950X3D so there was nothing preventing them from doing the same thing with an R9-7900X except stupidity and greed.
So now AMD has finally smartened up and made a Ryzen 5 X3D CPU on the AM5 platform, but they even managed to screw up this "too little, too late" effort by having it as a Micro Center exclusive. The optics of this are horrible as it's a slap in the face to not only >90% of the world, but also to >75% of the US population as well. Back when AMD released the R5-5600X3D as a limited-run Micro Center exclusive we didn't mind it so much because X3D was still a new thing and it was the first time that they attached the 3D V-Cache to a hexacore CPU, something that isn't true today. Thus far, the R5-7600X3D has existed since the dawn of AM5 X3D CPUs as one half of the ill-fated R9-7900X3D. This time, AMD has literally no excuse for both the lack of R5-7600X3D from the very beginning nor do they have any excuse for making this a lame "Micro Center-Only" product.
Who the hell is running product development and distribution over there, Beavis and Butthead?
