Quote from: marc s on July 20, 2020, 19:03:54
Don't rule out Intel's hand in all this. They have deep pockets and continue to control OEMs like puppets on a financial string. COVID can slow down a supply chain, but that's not the whole story. I suspect the OEM's are playing it timid with the 4000 series and waiting for the 5000 series to hit the streets in the next few months. Also Intel's refresh eats up a lot of resources so AMD products generally get 2nd priority.
The other interesting thing is how they are keeping the Ryzen 4000s in more of the lower to mid-range products while giving Intel all the high end business. I don't think this is a coincidence. It's easy to find an Icelake laptop with NVIDIA RTX2070 chipset, but the same laptop in AMD form only uses its Vega 8 iGPU. Displays are another weakness. Except for the HP 455 G7, good luck finding a display over 250 nits with AMD inside.
The OEM's really don't think we notice? We do. Clean your act up!
>:(
While I can believe Intel is doing all it can, there is only so much money they can give OEMs. If OEMs actually believed that Renoir is going to be a huge success, there is IMO no way Intel could compensate them for the lost opportunity. It's not one big global cartel. They would stand to lose significant market share to companies that went with AMD. So, the question is just how much faith they have in AMD. The market is not made of enthusiasts. And buyers don't necessarily behave rationally. It's amazing what AMD did with U series chips but what does an average user of a high-end ultrabook (like X1 Carbon) do that can take advantage of it? Can they even tell the difference? Certainly, there are people who can.
It seems clear that server and desktop business has priority for AMD. Not only AMD lacks engineering resources to support laptop OEMs (which is very much necessary), they might be struggling with manufacturing capacities as well. Which could explain the spotty availability.