It wasn’t too long ago that having technology from AMD was a key differentiator for a systems maker. Now, staying only with Intel chips is setting Dell apart from its competitors. As vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems grow their Opteron-based portfolios, and as AMD continues to gain market share, Dell executives say there are no plans to introduce servers or PCs running on AMD processors.
Dell you sadly said no to having cheaper better performing systems. I hope Dell reconsiders this issue again. AMD change would drastically improve DELL systems performance and would cost less.
The problem is that most of Dell’s competitors are failing to deliver and people are still voting with their wallets and buying Intel systems.
Sure some of the competitors carry AMD, but how many of them market the fact that Dell bundles inferior processors?
In my opinion, since HP/Compaq became HP maybe HP could re-brand Compaq as a premium line and negotiate an exclusive contract with AMD.
It may water down the HP name, but they need to do something as Dell has pretty much secured its place in history by going up market with the XPS line.
Gateway could have done the same thing. I would have liked to see them offer a high end ($3,000) gaming machine with an optional cow pattern. It would have been a good way to re-establish their name but they basically decided to do more of the same while the company slowly sinks.
Even though AMD had such a strong year I still think Dell gained more market share only becasue the company is run by smarter people.
I don’t want to be an armchair quarterback, but what have HP and Gateway really come up with over the last couple of years to justify the several million/year they pay their CEOs and executives?
First of, I think ‘drasticaly’ is over-doing it quite a bit. Second, the systems would not cost less.
The performance of the Intel and AMD chips are relatively equal. Sure one may out perform the other at times, then a month or 2 later,it’s the other way around. The performance difference is almost always insignificant.
The cost being cheaper is also a false hope. The cost of the chips and the system hardware supporting it will be more or less the same. Also, Dell would have to deal with people wanting to know “do I buy this Intel system or this AMD system and why?” which sould put them in quite a pickle. No descent reason has come around for Dell to offer AMD processors.
Sure? If we sum that AMD
have some more horsepower
are usually cheaper at par of power
and due to SOI technology leak less energy being
– quieter and colder
– usually more overclockable
– have better possibilities of getting benefits from miniaturization
and moreover:
offers jet mature 64 bit implementation
offers efficient dual core implementation
offer x86 solution (opetron series 8xx) that scale up to 8 distinct CPUs
Summing all ements in the picture we have a lot of nice things that come with an AMD CPU that Intel would probably become capable to offer to users from 6 month to nearly 2 years after AMD, that’s an unacceptable delay in computing world.
In facts, saying “x86-64 dual core CPU with reasonable TDP” may design as well the good old AMD X2 or the future Conroe project…
AMD change would drastically improve DELL systems performance and would cost less.
I don’t think dell will ever swicth to amd if he did he would have to lower the retail price since amd systems sell for less and also for other reasons. i don’t think he can sell his systems any lower
and stay a billionaire at the same time. And, I heard intel gives dell some sort of rebates. as long the company stays healthy and he is able to keeps is billions, heck with the comsumer
The only reason Dell would stick with Intel is because Intel is giving them deep discounts and sweet incentives to do so. Everyone knows the price/performance benefits of AMD chips and I’m sure Dell knows this as well. Again, it all comes down to money. Plus, Dell is currently in the top position when it comes to PC sales. This allows them to tell their customers what they should have rather than listening to what they want.
DELL are almost allways the lowest bidder when big compagnies buys lots of PC. They are able to make a sell even without AMD on board. Big enterprise don’t care if the CPU inside is from AMD or Intel, as long as it’s able to meet a certain ratio of performance.
And INTEL must give them sh*t load of money to make them stay Intel only.
OTOH what geek who knows his salt would buy a Dell? no-one. Intel is fine for regular users and with the volume discounts that intel can provide it seems only logical.
People can complain to hell that Dell should use AMD, but then when they need their next machine the first place they will go is newegg or some such and build it themselves. Point?
Strongly agree. But, thinking about the non tech savvy AMD would give them a better performance for the money. And even if they do not notice the performance because the are no tech savvy they would notice the price drop.
An average user has no ability to guage performance; after a machine is preloaded with 13-tray icons (a regular sight to anybody who buys a new machine these days) and windows is crawling like a dog, there will be zero real-world, regular-user noticible difference.
Regular users think that “faster” should be like two times noticably faster and AMD doesn’t exactly do this. Only geeks can notice the one third second time savings and call it a purchase well made.
Hi,
you may be right about uber geeks assembling by themselves the AMD base machines.
But for notebooks (the hottest market, by the way) what i always look for in italy is three yrs NBD assistance, and, right now, only DELL is offering that.
As a professional, i need availabiltiy of my notebook (which use for job), and no one (else than Dell), offers that kind of assistance in italy.
Another thing is that AMD needs something like the Centrino brand, based around some well known parts (chipset, wireless, processor) whcih can be supported effortlessly. The 2200g part perhaps is not the best wireless chip around, but it is supported in linux.
I just bought an Inspiron 9300 notebook. With all the coupons you get, it’s about the best deal I could find price/performance wise. They’re even upgradeable to the Nvidia 7800Go if you want to mod it yourself. The 17″ 1920×1200 panel is sweet, and if you don’t buy the 2 gig from Dell you’re talking about $1400 (EPP coupons are incredible) for a powerful, somewhat light, and battery-friendly (9 volt is about 3.5 hrs for light use) desktop replacement.
OTOH what geek who knows his salt would buy a Dell? no-one.
I did. It was a simple decision i bought a Dell 400SC server to use as my desktop for $300 slapped in a SATA hard drive,RAM and a decent video card. not to mention the board in it is manufactured by intel and is in standard ATX format Still cheaper then buying all the part seperatly.
Dell not using AMD in their servers is a huge mistake. This positions SUN to be the premier provided of AMD server iron for windows, linux and Solaris.
Though I’m a pretty thorough-going AMD fanboy / Intel hater, you have to consider those who do volume purchasing for large sites. For instance, the uni at which I work, though Sun is also pretty well represented (and recently we did get some opteron servers 🙂 and we have large number of Macs, it’s almost all Dell for the rest (poweredge servers, optiplex workstations, etc). I think you’ll find this quite common in the corporate/academic/government world.
You just don’t much care for your customers do you? How’s that AMD Intel lawsuit coming anyway? Maybe if that’s successful we can put a stop to this, probably illegal, certainly immoral, business practice of selling at a bargain with agreement to not buy the competition.
Like always Dell only cares about their huge customers. In the direct PC business, US Government contracts rule the product line. I work for another direct OEM (NotDell) and I have never come across a Bid for Gov’t or Big business that doesn’t specify intel by name.
You just don’t much care for your customers do you? How’s that AMD Intel lawsuit coming anyway? Maybe if that’s successful we can put a stop to this, probably illegal, certainly immoral, business practice of selling at a bargain with agreement to not buy the competition.
Stop your whining. You don’t have to buy a Dell. Dell notebooks are great deals. It’s idiotic to say that it’s somehow immoral because they don’t offer AMDs. The PentiumM, and now Yonah, are great processors for notebooks. Dell is supposed to get the great discounts from Intel.
” Only geeks can notice the one third second time savings and call it a purchase well made.”
Yeah, and only geeks have nothing better to do with their time then build their own PCs. Everybody else has more important, worthwhile things to do. Just look at all those losers in the hardware forums proudly displaying the specs on their “rigs” in their signatures. Jesus people, get a life.
Don’t buy their overrated electronics or computers. They are sooooo overrated and their computers were and are ugly to boot. Who designed those wood paneled laptops ?
Michael Dell is just a corporate fool.
He wont put whats good in a computer. Just what makes him money.
Just because you don’t like Intel chips doesn’t make them a bad product. Pentium M and Yonah are both fantastic chips (this is agreed upon by most people on either side of the line). AMD chips are good too. He may not be putting AMD chips in his machines, but he is putting good chips in them.
Michael Dell is just a corporate fool.
He wont put whats good in a computer. Just what makes him money.
not a fool but a corporate genius, for finding a great formula that makes him alot of money. that is what corporations are all about making money.
with the new Xeon server chips that will be redesigned i think operon will be having a run for its money.
The cost savings are all around. Not only would they get a discount, but think of the inventory savings – the number of products to keep track of, buy, evaluate, debug, qa, support, refurbish are noticably reduced… and *that* reduces cost, which are passed on to consumers.
You are forgeting one very important thing: AMD does not have it’s own chipset.
That would not matter much if reliability of nf4 or new VIA KT’s is on par with Intel’s chipsets but unfortunately it isn’t especially in controller logic. I’m an IT and I have quite alot of xp with both INTEL and AMD. nf based boards are simply hell for non educated users, full of bugs, odd behaviuors…..
Performance wise AMD is the king, but if I had to choose between performance and reliability I’d go for reliability.
Anyone knows the only way you can get an Intel for a reasonable price it to buy a dell.
Ho hum…this must make good business sense to someone.
-nX
Exactly. MOST OEM built machines out there have Intel processors. You have to weed through them to find AMD processors, and then they’re usually Semprons like anybody wants those. I did have an HP with a AMD64 but it still came with the usual HP parts and not even with PCI express.