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AMD reportedly can’t keep up the supply of Ryzen 4000-series APUs

Have global brands "finally got the memo that AMD's tech is pretty good", or is something else going on?

Ryzen 4000 APU

AMD’s been on the up lately, and only yesterday CNBC reported that the Bank of America believes AMD will be the next $100 billion chip company. But while AMD’s codename ‘Renoir’ APUs (accelerated processing units) are now coming to desktop and already sitting in the homes of many a gamer as mobile laptop APUs, it looks like it’s not all sun and roses on the Red Team’s turf, since we’re now hearing reports that AMD can’t keep up the supply of these APUs.

OEM gaming laptop and PC manufacturer XMG recently explained on Reddit (via Sweclockers) that the company is “facing a serious CPU shortage from AMD in Q3 2020”, and that AMD has confirmed that “this is an industry-wide shortage and there is no way around it”. We’ve contacted AMD for comment on the issue and will update as soon as we hear back.

XMG says it currently has “an order backlog with our original design manufacturer on Ryzen 7 4800H of over 1,600 units”. Apparently both AMD and the ODM (original design manufacturer) have confirmed that XMG will get the CPUs, but the ODM won’t receive them before the end of September.

This comes not long after AMD announced that its Renoir APUs would be coming to desktop, first in OEM form. A large number of bulk OEM orders might go some way towards explaining why AMD can’t keep up its APU production at the moment. And, of course, it’s important to remember that, unlike Intel, the company relies on an out-of-house semiconductor manufacturer (TSMC) for processor production.

XMG, in its Reddit post, goes on to discuss the controversial “AMD versus Intel” topic – the company has gone back to edit, correct, and expand on some of its original statements after user responses to the post. For instance, it’s struck out the statement that Intel offers “better gaming performance on average”, stating that this was “a bit too generalised and could be interpreted as misleading”.

There are other ‘AMD versus Intel’ statements and discussions in the post, but overall – and this is speculation on our part – it looks to us like XMG is giving justification for the option it’s given customers who have ordered an AMD Ryzen 7 4800H laptop to switch to an Intel Core i7 10750H without paying any extra. The points seem fair and reasoned, but we know how difficult it can be to convince someone who’s firmly planted on Team Red or Team Blue of the opposition’s merits. For our money the Core i7 10750H replacement should be more than adequate for many users, depending on the particular use case.

Whatever the case, it looks like AMD is having Renoir production issues at the moment, and whether this is because, as XMG implies, certain “global brands … finally got the memo that AMD’s tech is pretty good”, or whether something else is going on, is unclear. Let’s hope for a quick and proper solution, though, because AMD’s latest laptop processors are definitely popular right now, and its desktop variants are being patiently anticipated by many of us.