Hop onto all the big etailers and you'll find that AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU is sold out. Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, the lot. Nobody has stock, I just checked!

In fact, some observers reckon the chip, which Dave describes as the "new king of gaming CPUs", sold out in minutes. Meanwhile, other sources reckon Intel's new Arrow Lake CPUs have been catastrophically slow sellers, with German etailer Mindfactory claimed to have not shifted a single chip in the first week of sales.

That said, Intel Arrow Lake chips like the Core Ultra 9 285K have also been sold out at times. Indeed, right now it's sold out on Amazon.

So, the nuance here involves availability. How many chips were actually available for launch? Unfortunately, that's very hard to say with any certainty. Allegedly, for instance, there were 3,000 Ryzen 7 9800X3D chips available at launch [[link]] for the whole of Germany.

Is that a lot or a little? Even that isn't easy to say definitively. [[link]] Stories have also circulated regarding very low availability of Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs, so it's pretty hard to be sure exactly where these new CPUs fall along the demand and supply curve.

However, one indication is the annoying scalper market. If there's evidence that people are willing to pay over the odds for something to scalpers, there's probably quite a bit of demand.

Well, wouldn't you know it, a Ryzen 7 9800X3D popped up on eBay for $999, miles above its $479 recommended retail price. And it appears to have sold yesterday. A current eBay search throws up a number of Ryzen 7 9800X3D chips for sale around the $675 mark for chips that are on "pre order".

Actually "in hand" and ready to ship CPUs seem to be more expensive. This eBay listing claims to have a 9800X3D ready to go for $735 and the listing indicates 10 have already sold.

But what of the Intel alternative? Actually, eBay has listings for those well above list, too. How about this one for $1,299? Yes, really. A Core Ultra 9 285K for $1,299. In fact, if you want one that ships from the US, the cheapest is $899, and that's a pre-order. Suppliers in Israel will do you one for about $760.

All of which means that we can fairly confidently say that all of these chips are in pretty short supply, right now. Are any of them worth paying a huge premium? We'd say no, not even the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and certainly not an Arrow [[link]] Lake CPU.

Ultimately, chips like these are often in short supply just after launch and if you can wait a month or two, it's very likely there will be plenty available at MSRP. There really is little reason to pay massively over the odds.

Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.