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I bought a Comet Lake laptop last year, and then later another laptop with Ice Lake. Both i7. So far, so good. Yesterday, I bought a Tiger Lake i5 laptop; I wou

I bought a Comet Lake laptop last year, and then later another laptop with Ice Lake. Both i7. So far, so good. Yesterday, I bought a Tiger Lake i5 laptop; I would have been happy to buy a Zen 4 laptop but I couldn't find any at the price point I needed. I heard on the AMD earnings call yesterday that there was some tightness in the lower end of the Ryzen laptop lineup due to AMD under-anticipating the demand. Here's a quote: So certainly, when I look at the semiconductor environment in 2020, it was very strong. So we saw a strong revenue ramp in our business, as well as across some of our peers. It's fair to say that the overall demand exceeded our planning. And as a result, we did have some supply constraints as we ended the year. Those were primarily I would say in the PC market, the low end of the PC market, and in the gaming markets. That being said, I think we're getting great support from our manufacturing partners. The industry does need to increase the overall capacity levels. And so we do see some tightness through the first half of the year, but there's added capacity in the second half. So I anticipate that Intel is going to keep the pricing pressure on, to recapture market share. We already see this in the desktop processors, where AMD now sells at a premium versus Intel (admittedly, for good reason).

greggyb 6y ago
> I would have been happy to buy a Zen 4 laptop but I couldn't find any at the price point I needed. And you'd need to budget for a time machine, first! AMD has done a poor job with naming for their new processors and architecture. The architecture is called 'Zen'. The consumer SKUs have a model name of 'Ryzen'. I'll ignore the server parts for now (model name 'Epyc'). The Zen architecture progressed as follows: Zen-->Zen+-->Zen2-->Zen3 The Ryzen model numbers for desktop progressed as follows: Ryzen 1000-->Ryzen 2000-->Ryzen 3000-->Ryzen 5000. The Ryzen model numbers for laptop SKUs progressed mostly as follows: Ryzen Mobile 2000-->Ryzen Mobile 3000-->Ryzen Mobile 4000-->Ryzen Mobile 5000. Some of the newest Ryzen Mobile 5000-series are actually Zen2, aka rebadged Ryzen Mobile 4000-series. So, Zen4 is still upcoming and not available to anyone except AMD's engineers who are currently developing it.
- totalZero 6y ago
  Haha, yes you are correct. My time machine is on the fritz. That said, it is true that I would have been happy to buy a Zen 4 laptop. It is also true that they were not available. The laptop I ended up buying comes in a Ryzen 5 4500U flavor as well as a Tiger Lake i5-1135G7 flavor. I would have preferred the AMD-powered device but it was not available from my preferred retailer and sold out from the manufacturer, so I ended up going with the Intel version. Thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize that the leading number didn't denote generation.
  - greggyb 6y ago
    Hardware naming is awful, in general, in my experience (: The interesting part of all of this is something that you've experienced directly, here. People crap all over Intel for being stuck on 14nm, and there are definitely good reasons to do so. But the upshot is that they are sitting on a ridiculously mature, optimized manufacturing node that has ample capacity. They can pump out enough silicon to meet demand, or at least get much closer to it than anyone else right now.

greggyb 6y ago

> I would have been happy to buy a Zen 4 laptop but I couldn't find any at the price point I needed. And you'd need to budget for a time machine, first! AMD has done a poor job with naming for their new processors and architecture. The architecture is called 'Zen'. The consumer SKUs have a model name of 'Ryzen'. I'll ignore the server parts for now (model name 'Epyc'). The Zen architecture progressed as follows: Zen-->Zen+-->Zen2-->Zen3 The Ryzen model numbers for desktop progressed as follows: Ryzen 1000-->Ryzen 2000-->Ryzen 3000-->Ryzen 5000. The Ryzen model numbers for laptop SKUs progressed mostly as follows: Ryzen Mobile 2000-->Ryzen Mobile 3000-->Ryzen Mobile 4000-->Ryzen Mobile 5000. Some of the newest Ryzen Mobile 5000-series are actually Zen2, aka rebadged Ryzen Mobile 4000-series. So, Zen4 is still upcoming and not available to anyone except AMD's engineers who are currently developing it.

totalZero 6y ago
Haha, yes you are correct. My time machine is on the fritz. That said, it is true that I would have been happy to buy a Zen 4 laptop. It is also true that they were not available. The laptop I ended up buying comes in a Ryzen 5 4500U flavor as well as a Tiger Lake i5-1135G7 flavor. I would have preferred the AMD-powered device but it was not available from my preferred retailer and sold out from the manufacturer, so I ended up going with the Intel version. Thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize that the leading number didn't denote generation.
- greggyb 6y ago
  Hardware naming is awful, in general, in my experience (: The interesting part of all of this is something that you've experienced directly, here. People crap all over Intel for being stuck on 14nm, and there are definitely good reasons to do so. But the upshot is that they are sitting on a ridiculously mature, optimized manufacturing node that has ample capacity. They can pump out enough silicon to meet demand, or at least get much closer to it than anyone else right now.