AMD brags about Amazon sales lead, but a $80 Ryzen 5 5500 tops the chart

AMD's senior marketing director Saša Marinković shared a screenshot of Amazon's CPU best-sellers list, touting the company's strong presence. But at the moment the image was taken, the top spot belonged not to the flagship Ryzen 7 9800X3D but to the four-year-old budget Ryzen 5 5500 on the DDR4 platform, priced at just $80.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has since reclaimed the number-one position — it remains the best gaming processor — but the screenshot highlights the persistent demand for DDR4 platforms, nearly four years after Zen 4 launched and AMD moved to DDR5. And it's not just about that one model.

Of the 25 best-selling CPUs on Amazon, three slots belong to Intel, and one is taken by Thermal Grizzly's AM5 contact frame. AMD holds every other position, though the split between DDR4 and DDR5 is nearly even: nine Zen 3 chips on DDR4 versus twelve Zen 4 and Zen 5 models on DDR5. According to Tom's Hardware, Marinković's screenshot is slightly outdated — Intel has since gained two more spots, and AMD's DDR4-to-DDR5 ratio shifted to nine and ten, respectively.

The irony is that AMD's marketing chief highlights the company's representation in the sales chart while a four-year-old processor sits at the top, not one of the many capable DDR5 chips released since. The connection between DDR4 popularity and current RAM pricing is easy to draw. Several motherboard makers previously told Tom's Hardware they are ramping up DDR4 board production due to demand for older platforms.

The Ryzen 5 5500 is one of the cheapest CPUs available. For $80, buyers get six cores and twelve threads on the Zen 3 architecture with boost clocks up to 4.2 GHz, plus a bundled Wraith Stealth cooler. However, the chip has a reduced 16 MB L3 cache compared to other Zen 3 parts, and it tops out at PCIe 3.0. Tom's Hardware recently pitted the Ryzen 5 5500 against rivals in a $100 CPU shootout.