GPD blames AMD for delay in Win Max 2 handheld PC shipments

[midian182]

What just happened? It's unusual for a company to single out one of its partners for blame over a delayed product, but that's what GPD has done. The handheld/ultraportable PC maker has named AMD as the reason why some GPD Win Max 2 models have been delayed, claiming Team Red breached its contract by not supplying enough Ryzen 7 7840U APUs for the machines.

As spotted by VideoCardz, GPD apologized on its crowdfunding page to customers who ordered its Win Max 2 but have yet to receive the devices.

The company says that the problem is due to its upstream supplier violating their agreement. It's claimed that the Ryzen 7 7840U, used in the more powerful version of the Win Max 2, was delivered in batches, but the upstream supplier was unable to deliver the second batch.

The note goes on to specifically state that AMD breached the contract and could not deliver the second batch of APUs to GPD's upstream supplier, leaving it unable to make production.

All versions of the Win Max 2 with Ryzen 7 7840U chips have been impacted. Shipments of handhelds powered by the 7640U have not been affected as GPD has that configuration in stock.

Unsurprisingly, several less-than-happy backers responded to the post. One asks for an estimated delivery time and whether GPD will offer expedited delivery, otherwise, they will cancel their order. Another person said to cancel their order if it still hasn't shipped, while one backer requested that both their orders be canceled.

The GPD WIN Max 2's crowdfunding goal of $3 million was smashed last year by 5,655 backers who pledged just over $5.5 million.

Back in March, AMD announced that the Zen4 and RDNA 3-based Ryzen 7040HS Phoenix APU series launch date was being pushed back from that month to April. There have also been availability issues with the Phoenix U series.

The last major news we heard about GPD was in June when the Shenzhen-based company said it was working on a pocket-friendly eGPU dock that could boost the graphics performance of many of its devices.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100502-gpd-blames-amd-delay-win-max-2-handheld.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Wouldnt be the first time, this was an issue during the athlon days too.

I like the idea of their dock, we need more thunderbolt docks with built in GPUs that dont take up an ITX PCs worth of space.

 

[Dimitriid]

Interesting: no other vendor has gone as far as to call out AMD this openly (Although they seem to have a rock-solid case of contract breach to do so without expecting a libel suit in return from AMD) but this is something that I have quite honestly seen across other products like mini/NUC-style systems and laptops: there's just basically no products out there using the 7840u but if you can deal with just using a 7840h those products are now starting to appear and in steady supply.

If I had to guess, the obvious seems to be that AMD is just allocating most of those chips to the Ryzen Z1 extreme chips that big partners with probably far, FAR bigger volumes are putting: namely Asos and the Rog Ally and the upcoming Lenovo Legion GO which appear to be just slightly different bin of the same 7840u chips to create the Z1 extremes.

It's a shame that even for the more commonly found 7840H and 7940H (And it's higher end variants) seem to be way more scarce in the market since they're basically very competitive vs intel products in most areas, losing only slightly to battery life/efficiency but making up for and then some with the fact that you can get away with some decent gaming on just the 780M graphics whereas you'd have a terrible time relying on the iris pro graphics for your gaming on competing intel products.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Interesting: no other vendor has gone as far as to call out AMD this openly (Although they seem to have a rock-solid case of contract breach to do so without expecting a libel suit in return from AMD) but this is something that I have quite honestly seen across other products like mini/NUC-style systems and laptops: there's just basically no products out there using the 7840u but if you can deal with just using a 7840h those products are now starting to appear and in steady supply.

If I had to guess, the obvious seems to be that AMD is just allocating most of those chips to the Ryzen Z1 extreme chips that big partners with probably far, FAR bigger volumes are putting: namely Asos and the Rog Ally and the upcoming Lenovo Legion GO which appear to be just slightly different bin of the same 7840u chips to create the Z1 extremes.

It's a shame that even for the more commonly found 7840H and 7940H (And it's higher end variants) seem to be way more scarce in the market since they're basically very competitive vs intel products in most areas, losing only slightly to battery life/efficiency but making up for and then some with the fact that you can get away with some decent gaming on just the 780M graphics whereas you'd have a terrible time relying on the iris pro graphics for your gaming on competing intel products.

Probably either major yield or capacity issues. I guessed this would happen when it was unveiled that most of the 7000 mobiles were either zen 3 or 2, hell there was a zen+ hiding in there. 0 reason to do that unless you just cant get the new stuff out quick enough.

 

[m3tavision]

Interesting: no other vendor has gone as far as to call out AMD this openly (Although they seem to have a rock-solid case of contract breach to do so without expecting a libel suit in return from AMD) but this is something that I have quite honestly seen across other products like mini/NUC-style systems and laptops: there's just basically no products out there using the 7840u but if you can deal with just using a 7840h those products are now starting to appear and in steady supply.

If I had to guess, the obvious seems to be that AMD is just allocating most of those chips to the Ryzen Z1 extreme chips that big partners with probably far, FAR bigger volumes are putting: namely Asos and the Rog Ally and the upcoming Lenovo Legion GO which appear to be just slightly different bin of the same 7840u chips to create the Z1 extremes.

It's a shame that even for the more commonly found 7840H and 7940H (And it's higher end variants) seem to be way more scarce in the market since they're basically very competitive vs intel products in most areas, losing only slightly to battery life/efficiency but making up for and then some with the fact that you can get away with some decent gaming on just the 780M graphics whereas you'd have a terrible time relying on the iris pro graphics for your gaming on competing intel products.

It's a chinese company & the 7840U has Ai.... might add to the dely...?

 

[Watzupken]

AMD's APU since the Ryzen 4xxx days have always took a very long time to become widely available. This is a combination of high demand and limited supply. Obviously AMD would have prioritise their TR and data center chips given these are higher margin products.