“Lack of laptops with Kaby Lake G chips may be due to Nvidia”
According to the website Notebookcheck, there may be few laptops with a Kaby Lake-G chip because of Nvidia’s Geforce Partners Program. That program would prevent manufacturers from using AMD’s Kaby Lake processor with Vega chip.
The website Notebookcheck reports that it has spoken to three independent and reliable sources and they have all suggested that Nvidia is largely responsible for preventing the growth in the number of laptops available with a Kaby Lake G chip. Specific substantiation for these claims has not been disclosed. The new Intel chips with an AMD GPU were announced in January.
Notebookcheck reports that only four systems have been announced so far that feature the new Intel processors with a Vega GPU with hbm2 on board: the Dell XPS 15 9575, HP Specter x360 15, Intel Hades Canyon NUC and Chuwi HiGame mini PC. . Of these, only Dell and HP products qualify as laptops. It seems that for now only Dell and HP are making laptops with the new chips, Notebookcheck says. Other major manufacturers, such as MSI, Zotac, Gigabyte, Asus, Lenovo and Acer, are silent about laptops with the Kaby Lake G chips, something that Notebookcheck says is strange, given that it is an interesting chip that comes from a special collaboration between the two biggest rivals in the PC market.
HP and Dell are previously rumored to be two major manufacturers that unlike others have refused to join the Geforce Partner Program. The website HardOCP previously reported that the so-called Geforce Partners Program requires participants to link their gaming brands exclusively to Nvidia. If they refuse, they lose certain benefits such as marketing funds.
The laptop website notes that, for example, the Core i5-8705G and Core i7-8809G, two Kaby Lake G chips, are comparable in raw computing power to the Core i7-7700HQ and Core i7-7820HK, while the Vega M GL and the Vega M GH GPU can be compared with the Nvidia GTX 1050 and the GTX 1060 Max-Q GPU, respectively. Thin laptops around the Kaby Lake G chips could therefore be a good option for gamers on a budget, says Notebookcheck, who speculates that adoption seems to depend on Nvidia and its GPP partners.