GPD says AMD breached contract with Ryzen 7 7840U supply issues
GPD is now saying that AMD has breached a contract regarding the supply of Ryzen 7 7840U chips, as the chipmaker seems to not be able to ship enough of them to GPD’s upstream supplier. This evidently resulted in GPD being unable to fulfill orders for their numerous Ryzen 7 7840U-based handheld PCs. I guess in frustration, GPD went on their Indiegogo page to vent, before later removing the post.
AMD is not making enough Ryzen 7 7840U chips?
Most OEM partners will keep mum regarding chip shortages, as they have to take care of the relationship with the chipmakers. However I guess GPD has much less to lose than say, ASUS or MSI, and thus has taken this unusual approach to call AMD out. But then again, it is also likely that this lack of skin in the game that also led to them (or their upstream supplier) being deprioritized for supply, as the Ryzen 7 7840U is a rather popular chip.
For starters, the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme is essentially a Ryzen 7 7840U, albeit having its Ryzen AI engine disabled. With the ROG Ally having sold like hotcakes and the Lenovo Legion Go incoming, I bet AMD will be more than happy to utilize their Ryzen 7 7840Us as the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. In fact, if you look at the current market scene, there’s a surprising lack of Ryzen 7 7840U-based laptops, despite it being a great choice for a gaming-capable thin-and-light machine.
If we look at it from another direction though, this might just be GPD shifting the blame for their slow fulfillments. Recently, we saw a number of keyboard vendors go bust without fulfilling the group buys and pre-orders taken. With GPD’s business model of crowdfunding their devices, I am not exactly sure if you should pre-order a GPD device at all for now.
