You asked if Intel can make enough Tiger Lake to put it in all mainstream laptops (that's how I understood it).
The answer is: no. And it simply can't happen. Because:
*Reasons*
That's a ton of rationale to explain away that 10nm continues to be a rolling disaster for Intel. Historically speaking, when Intel was functional, they would roll out new chips and quickly deprecate the old chips. That there was New-Old-Stock in the channel was to be expected, but they would put a shiny new generation badge on the new laptops and OEMs got new hype for their marketing and customers clearly knew they were getting something better than before.
The 8th-9th-10th generations for Intel are essentially making new SKUs available but not doing much with the underlying tech. More cores, less HT, then more HT again. Then they mixed the new laptop skus pretty hard into the 10th gen branding, which was a fairly unique marketing move.
And why? Because 10nm was such a mess they built out a fewer number of fabs and decided to focus on their 7nm process, which is now late too and further puts pressure on 10nm capacity and gives us a back port in the form of Rocket Lake on 14+++(++? ha). Which is simply an ongoing train wreck that I do understand.
The question I am asking is
really if there will be enough Tiger Lake availability to matter, or will it be buried in a refresh full of other products named nearly the same thing, similar to Ice Lake. We're in a CPU thread on a fairly hardcore tech forum. There are people with their ear to the ground who might be able to say more interesting things like "Tiger Lake will ship at 2-3x the volume of Ice Lake for mobile. That means x-many units per month." That could be extrapolated into industry insight. I haven't read anything like that. I am not getting anything specific like that from recent responses.
Yeah, I know you don't get this. I won't convince you.
But $1000 is like... MacBook Air / basic Dell XPS money. Nothing special.
That's like an opinion, man. There are many deals to be had for those that know what they are looking for. Both of those purchases are heavy on brand, light on utility at that price point.
Also, I help a lot of people trying to stretch their dollars.
Earlier, you mentioned just trusting OEMs to provide good value and combinations of features at whatever price point. Clearly you know that there are SKUs being sold out there that are incredibly regrettable but eminently shiny. Or have no business being priced where they are but hey, why not charge $800 for a $500 item if you can get people to pay for it? Or maybe you can get last years hardware but since it's just a rebrand of this years hardware, it's a great value.
Which is the kind of information you expect your pc hardware nerd friend to know.
That's exactly how it works. Backlit keyboard, better screen, better choice of ports, better looks as well. That's the stuff you really interact with every day.
But only if key properties (performance, battery life, size etc) were at least close. This may not be the case for Nehalem vs Ivy Bridge, but for Comet Lake vs Ice Lake - absolutely. Putting graphics aside, they perform almost the same in daily use. And most Ice Lake laptops come with G1 and G4, not G7.
It sure is fun using ARK to see if the laptop is really a three year old model or a new one. My point isn't that the differences were great but that they exist. When you bought a nehalem or ivb CPU you knew this clearly at a glance by the model number. 10th generation whacked this, and we can differ on opinion but being on the latest platform is usually worth some premium. Intel must agree at least somewhat to co-brand 10th gen like they did. FWIW I ended up helping one of my friends by a P53s for his son this summer - with a Whisky Lake 8th Gen in it. But given it had great overall specs and big discount for being an outgoing model, the utility for the dollar was the most important.
You asserted that I only cared because I only want the latest and greatest. I'd disagree, I want to make sure I am not paying a premium for a product that is ancient, and if I can find the latest tech at same/lower prices I'd choose that instead.
You know... I sometimes write this kind of non-nonsense stuff here and I see comments like this one. Total doubt and sarcasm. "Blows my mind" stuff.
No offense, but it's like some people here didn't have friends who don't game and don't run benchmarks... And I find that hard to believe.
Haha, I do have friends like that. And sometimes their decisions do boggle my mind.
The thing is, they don't spend any time on Anandtech forums discussing the finer merits of e-die vs b-die ram or something else trivial to non-hobbysists because you're right, they don't care. Advocating that CPU generation/model doesn't matter in a CPU sub forum, along with advocating we trust OEMs to balance their products offerings fairly in terms of value is what is tripping my mental fuse.
Critically: They also don't make a point to ask me to personally shop tech for them. The people that do ask me want to make sure they are aren't buying (or buying another, based on past experiences) a SKU of Regret, as previously mentioned.
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