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[Bofferbrauer2]

Are we back in 2005? Because either companies are starting to fear what Intel would do to them if they don't put their hardware into a better light or Intel is starting forcing them to. Just look what happened with the new Alienware computers:

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/321919-alienware-really-doesnt-want-you-to-buy-an-amd-ryzen-pc

Omitting information for AMD, no praise for the AMD version while praising Intel's version to no end, making it look like the AMD version is an old computer and then to top it off bottlenecking the AMD version with single-channel RAM? Yeah, that looks more like Athlon 64 vs Pentium 4 than Ryzen vs Core.

AsGryffynn said:

What caused the spike in demand, however?

From what I gather, we were already close to the limit before Covid started. Case in point, AMD's quad-cores 3100 and 3300X, which got raving reviews for their pricetags but were seldom seen in the wild because demand strongly outstripped supply.

Then of course, Covid happened, and with it, several effects in order:

1. People got sent home to work from there, meaning both the companies' servers needed to be upgraded to handle off-site input and the employers needed to have computers to be  able to do their work from home, sending a spike in demand for server hardware and business laptops.
2. With so many people layed off and sitting at home because of the lockdowns, they needed something to do at home, so electronic entertainment in form of console or PC gaming was the perfect way to fill the gap, meaning that gaming hardware and consoles got a spike in sales, too.
3. In the US, with the covid relief bills which sent money directly to the people, big chunks went into gaming as too many people sadly didn't have many better things to do anymore.
4. AMD Renoir and Cezanne happened. Both were clear upgrades for any previous hardware and thus quickly gained lots of demand. It didn't help that OEMs didn't believe the success of Renoir would be that big due to previous Ryzen laptop hardware clearly trailing Intel, thus initial orders were way too low (especially with covid, as explained above), and by the time Cezanne happened the chip crunch already started to show it's effects, so it couldn't cover all the demand until now.

The question is, how will demand evolve after covid? Will there still be such a strong demand for business laptops or gaming consoles if people go to their office instead of sitting at home? Will the servers not get upgraded anymore for a while now that the covid-related upgrades have been done?

The big chip companies said recently that the chip crunch could continue until 2023, but I have my doubts. There are simply too many reasons for the demand to go down again after summer, and I think by end of the year the situation should start to normalize again.