CheckMag | AMD cannot afford to alienate its laptop partners and needs to step on the gas, now!

It is no secret that AMD has traditionally lagged behind Intel and Nvidia in the laptop segment, at least in the number of designs available. AMD's Sasa Marinkovic put some of these concerns to rest when we spoke with him a couple of years ago, but the situation honestly hasn't really improved much.

According to an AC Analysis report, AMD's decision to focus more on datacenter isn't going along well with its notebook OEM partners. AC Analysis says that the shift in strategy has resulted in a "cold war ice age" relationship between AMD and its laptop OEMs. This is especially concerning in the wake of growing excitement towards Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Series and Intel's new Lunar Lake offerings.

The report also notes how AMD's "persistent startup culture" and compromises in the consumer space are affecting its prospects. This is unlike Intel and Nvidia, who seem equally focused across their datacenter and consumer lineups.

OEMs are also reportedly miffed at not getting enough AMD notebook chips for their designs in Q4 2023 and later. According to the analyst, "[OEM] partners cited miscommunication, unfulfilled promises, and generally poor treatment, reminiscent of Intel’s behavior during its dominant years."

ComputerBase further corroborates this by noting how AMD hasn't managed to meet OEM demand for its chips, evident by the lack of adequate numbers of Ryzen AI 300-powered laptops at IFA 2024. The publication reports, based on discussions with OEMs at the trade fair, that AMD's inability to supply enough and fast chips led to manufacturers downsizing their portfolio of Strix Point laptops. An OEM even said, AMD has "left billions of US dollars lying around" with its partners over the years.

Current situation with Strix Point

AMD currently has just two Strix Point APUs on offer: the Ryzen AI 9 365 and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 showed excellent potential in the three Asus laptops that we tested. Asus's exclusivity with AMD for these APUs ended just recently, from what we gather, so it is only now that we are seeing other OEMs introducing Ryzen AI 300-powered models.

So far, we know HP is launching an OmniBook Ultra featuring the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 while MSI has announced the Summit 16 AI+, Prestige A16 AI+, and Creator A16 AI+ at IFA 2024 with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen AI 9 365 options.

Acer did indicate that a Swift 14 with Ryzen AI 300 is in the works back during Computex 2024, but no announcements were made during the company's IFA event.

AMD also quietly introduced a Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 APU with a slightly faster 55 TOPS NPU, but no laptops featuring this APU have been announced yet.

Silent paper launches aren't new to AMD in the notebook space. Laptops powered by the Ryzen 9 7840HX are still nowhere to be found while almost no Ryzen 7 8840U-powered mainstream laptops made it to reviewers' hands, although we did come across the GPD Win Mini handheld and the Minisforum V3 tablet powered by the Ryzen 7 8840U.

A string of missed opportunities

Remember the AMD Advantage program? AMD's answer (sort of) to Intel Evo? AMD officially lists just three — yes, THREE — AMD Advantage laptops that you can get today in the US.

Globally, however, the Asus TUF Gaming A16, Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, Framework 16, MSI Alpha 17, and the MSI Alpha 15 are some of the Advantage program laptops you can potentially get, but the Alpha 17 has now abandoned ship to an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU.

Speaking of AMD mobile GPUs opens yet another can of worms. You would have come across hardly five or six devices featuring RDNA 3 mobile GPUs in our reviews so far.

How many RTX 4080 Laptop GPU laptops we've tested till date? 20.

And how many RX 7900M laptops we could review? A grand total of ONE.

This is reminiscent of the times when AMD Ryzen Renoir laptops launched with dGPUs no higher than an RTX 2060 Laptop GPU unlike their Intel counterparts. What exactly is AMD's hold up is anybody's guess at this point.

Oh, and the new Radeon RX 7800M is another soft launch that hardly ruffled any feathers given its immense potential.

Zen 5's prospects still look bright for 2025

While AMD certainly needs to up its game of courting OEMs and ensuring steady supply in order to effectively compete against the swarm of Intel-based laptops out there, Team Red's prospects are far from over.

In fact, the situation may not be as grim come 2025. AMD is expected to introduce more affordable Copilot+ laptops with Kraken Point, likely during CES 2025. Kraken Point is essentially a cut-down Strix Point APU with 4x Zen 5 + 4x Zen 5c cores, 8 CU RDNA 3.5 graphics, and a 50 TOPS XDNA 2 NPU. Then there are Strix Halo and Fire Range APUs in the offing for flagship laptops as well.

It is worth noting that despite Intel's aggressive marketing push for Meteor Lake, AMD still managed to increase its mobile CPU market share from 16.2% in Q1 2023 to 19.3% in Q1 2024 accompanied by a significant 16.3% increase in revenue.

AMD should thwart this mobile meltdown

The exact impact of AMD's reportedly renewed focus on datacenter on the consumer mobile segment, if any, will only become apparent late into 2025.

That being said, AMD cannot afford to be lackadaisical when it comes to mobile — especially considering the fact that both Qualcomm and now Intel, with a whopping 80 new Lunar Lake designs, are gnawing away at its heels. If industry insider reports are true, the company has its task cut out to address OEM requirements pronto and ensure OEMs aren't cutting down on designs for want of mobile CPUs and GPUs.

More importantly, AMD and OEMs need to address feature disparities between corresponding Intel and AMD SKUs of a laptop to make the choice compelling and easy for end users instead of having to compromise one feature for the other. It is not uncommon to see OEMs show a foster parent-esque treatment towards their AMD offerings, often nerfing or gimping features much to the chagrin and frustration of a prospective buyer.

A cursory glance at the Alienware m18 R1 Intel and m18 R1 AMD versions that we've reviewed last year is a good example of this.

The m18 R1 AMD lacks USB4, supports only 3x M.2 NVMe drives (as opposed to four in the Intel version), has a less power-efficient GPU, and lasts abysmally lower on battery compared to the Intel version despite sporting a more power-efficient CPU. This is aside from the fact that the m18 R1 AMD suffered teething performance issues at launch that could only be fixed by reverting to an older Radeon driver.

Here's hoping 2025 would turn out to be a better bet for Team Red and end customers alike.

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