GPD Accuses AMD of Violating Supply Contract

GPD Win Max 2 handheld
(Image credit: GPD)

GPD, a maker of ultra-compact notebooks designed for gamers, has notified crowdfunders of its Win Max 2 laptop that it will have to delay shipments of its PCs. According to GPD, AMD did not ship second batch of its Ryzen 7 7840U processors on time. As a result, the company has gone as far as said that AMD has violated its supply agreement.

"We are very sorry to inform some our users whose orders have locked but not shipped yet:  the original plan is we can ship all the locked orders, but there is no stock now," a statement by GPD reads (noticed by @Olrak29_). "The reason is that our upstream supplier violated the agreement, and the actual number of Ryzen 7 7840U that should be delivered to us is different from the previously agreed quantity did not match." 

GPD's Win Max 2 is a 'handheld' gaming PC with a 10-inch  display that is based around AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U or Ryzen 5 7640U and is equipped with up to 64 GB of memory as well as up to a 2 TB SSD. One of the key features of the unit is its support for GPD's own G1 external graphics solution featuring AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT graphics processor, which costs $655 and transforms the unit into something with graphics performance of Microsoft's Xbox Series X or higher.

It is noteworthy that GPD initially wanted its Win Max 2 to be powered by AMD's Ryzen 7 6800U or even Intel's Core i7-1260P 'Alder Lake' CPU, but eventually it decided to use AMD's APU with Zen 4 cores and RDNA 2 graphics. But as it turns out, GPD simply cannot get enough processors from AMD.

"Since it was delivered in batches, they were unable to deliver the second batch of 7840U," the statement continues. "It was AMD that breached the contract and could not deliver it to our upstream supplier as agreed upon, so we are now unable to make the production. We apologize for the inconvenience caused!" 

AMD has seemingly yet to comment (at least publicly) on the matter of GPD. GPD is, of course, a small PC maker and it is possible that AMD's supply was sold out to larger PC OEMs that typically get supply priority. Meanwhile, GPDs decision to use AMD's Phoenix instead of the company's Rembrandt or Intel's Alder Lake could also be a reason for the current situation.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.