Agreed. This really says AMD has more orders than their allotted capacity at TSMC and they don’t want those customers going back to Intel. I also think their data center demand is so high they *had* to push APUs back to 2025 because they repurposed some of their capacity for 2024 to MI300X and similar.
They are on sale for about $1k (US) right now. May have to look hard to find the 400 nits low power screen. $1026 for 7840U/400 nit FHD+ (OLED option +$119)/32 GB/256 GB/finger print reader/52 Whr battery -$100 if sign up for emails. So $900-ish plus tax w/non-gaming screen or $1k-ish+ tax w/OLED. You can upgrade the SSD yourself as they want $150 for 1 TB 9$45 for 512GB)
Of course Sam 4 LPP+ is worse than TSMC N3E. But AMD doesn’t have Apple margins to pay for that much N3E in 2024 nor is there that much N3E capacity based upon released numbers. So it’s either TSMC 4 nm or Sam 4 LPP+. I would think TSMC 4 nm.is at 100% utilization between AMD, nVidia, Intel, Mediatek, Qualcomm, Apple, etc.
That sucks on the build quality feeling. From everything I read, I thought it was a candidate. Can you compare it to any other laptops you have tried or owned for ‘feel’ issues? For example, I have 2 old AMD laptops and 2 Intel laptops - one being a 1 year old XPS. XPS by far the nicest screen and build quality but keyboard is shallow for my liking and had to tune it a lot to improve performance and batterty life (it is undervolted). The last 2 reasons are why I am considering ditching it and finding an AMD laptop.
This seems to follow the rumor from earlier in the year…
https://www.techpowerup.com/308065/amd-to-shift-some-of-its-4-nm-cpu-silicon-fabrication-to-samsung-from-tsmc. May 1st report date
As others point out, there are several comparing Eco mode vs stock. I did my own analysis over a frequency/temperature/power range for a 7900X. 45 C to 75 C which covered CPU package power of 55 W to 120 W.
To get to a 7950X, multiply by about 1.20-1.25x for the performance at the same power. Graphs showing results are at the bottom. Results do not apply to the X3D.
Totally seems to make sense like you brought up last week. AMD’s growth really seems to be manufacturing capacity constrained based upon reports from earlier in the year. But simultaneously, it’s great Samsung improved their 4 nm process so there is a competitive alternative.