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Comment by hengheng | Hacker News Reader

How's AMD's engineering support these days? I've heard through the grapevine that many laptops were mostly engineered by intel engineers, creating a natural moat because the laptop brands are used to not having to do much PCB layout or thermals.

AMD, I heard, seemed less capable, or less interested, or couldn't justify at their quantities, to do the same, which meant their engineering support packages were good for atx mainboards only, and maybe the occasional console.

This must have changed a while ago, does anyone have the tea?

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> and maybe the occasional console.

To me they seem to be dominating the console scene, doing the CPU and GPU for all consoles from the last two generations, except for Switch and Wii U.

And even there, AMD did the GPU for the Wii U, that console was an evolution of the Wii (which was itself an evolution to the Gamecube). AMD had acquired the makers of the Wii/Gamecube graphics chip, and also separately designed the Wii U-specific upgrade GPU used for native Wii U games.

Rest in Peace ATI.

That’s more done by ex. Compal than shrinking Intel, the myth you could trust that was shattered by their insistence up until 4 months before release date that Haswell(?) was going to hit its thermal envelope and perf targets. In 2018, iirc, that was the beginning of the end. Apple had to ship a MacBook generation that struggled with thermals for 3 years and decided to never again be put in that position. Similarly at other important OEMs.

I’m not sure you're going to find anyone here who can personally comment on AMD engineering support, but I can say first hand Asus zephyrus laptops using AMD chips are rock solid.

> How's AMD's engineering support these days?

From the recent experience that I buy AMD mini-pc. (minisforun AI HX370) I don't feel it exist. (Because there is no need to) You just plug it into power socket and than it works. (Which is a good thing)

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