> One theory I heard is Intel requires them to sell a certain number of their chips on premium machines if they want to stay on their nice partners list and get

> One theory I heard is Intel requires them to sell a certain number of their chips on premium machines if they want to stay on their nice partners list and get their chips at good prices so they just gimp the Ryzen ones to force your hand to buy Intel if you want no other compromises other than an outdated CPU. I wouldn't put this past intel, but I doubt it's even necessary. most people that buy laptops don't know that amd is currently beating intel on price/performance in the high-end parts. to most people that have even heard of amd, it's the "budget" cpu brand. looking at typical home user desktop/laptop configurations, it's obvious that they aren't even trying to choose optimal sets of parts for the price with most of their skus. they just slap together whatever sounds good to the median consumer.