Dell No Longer Plans to Use AMD Processors

KingFish

Following Intel Corp.’s release of Intel Pentium 4 processors 600-series as well as yet another lineup of Intel Xeon DP, the world’s largest computer maker Dell Inc., who exclusively use Intel’s microprocessors in its products, said the company does not have plans to introduce systems powered by chips from Advanced Micro Devices.

According to a report from Reuters, speaking to investors at the Goldman Sachs Technology Symposium in Phoenix, Arizona, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said that Dell had been considering turning to AMD as a second source of central processing units (CPUs). However, at this point the company is no longer mulling to use processors from Advanced Micro Devices in its computers.

Mr. Rollins said his company’s customers and key Wall Street analysts had begun demanding that Dell start offering PCs based on AMD chips after desktop processors from the latter not only beat Intel Corp.’s Pentium 4 in terms of performance in a lot of applications, but also offered features, including 64-bit capability and power-saving technology that were absent in Intel’s products. AMD’s Opteron processors also managed to beat Intel’s Xeon chips in server and workstation benchmarks. Intel had not had a response to AMD Athlon 64 for about 1.5 years and a number of customers could consider switch to CPUs from AMD.

“We believe that Intel has responded… That is now beginning to put customers more at ease that they don’t need to make a shift (to AMD),” Kevin Rollins is reported to have said.

Source: X-Bit Labs

drasnor

But Intel responded with NetBurst chips w/ AMD64 strapped on, hardly what I'd call a response. Everything about these chips is half-hearted (replace "hearted" with your favorite expletive).

Dell: "Wow, it's amazing how many bullets my foot will hold!"

-drasnor

Komete

That suxxors... The place I work with only uses Dells and we were all hoping dell would go AMD for our next upgrade..

Garg

drasnor wrote:

Dell: "Wow, it's amazing how many bullets my foot will hold!"

-drasnor

I wish I was in charge of SM Bytes

edcentric

I'll bet that the boys at Sun are smiling.
http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2354

lemonlime

Oh well, their loss :shakehead

Thrax

Dell, FOAD IRL KTHX.

qparadox

I hope intel is givin them one heck of a price break :P.

Sputnik

qparadox: they always do. Especially when they threaten to go use AMD chips (which they never were intending on using in the first place....

Jengo

k

FAH_WW

Personally I'd love to see Dell move towards AMD as well. Fact is Intel messed up bad, and another fact is that they are addressing it. Dell no doubt has volume-discounts with Intel, and a single supplier seems to work for them.

It's a genuine shame for AMD, but at the same time it's ZERO surprise really..

We use Dell equipment at work. That used to be a bad thing, these days it's sound equipment generally speaking (servers, laptops). I have mostly AMD gear at home, but also some Intel, and only when market forces push Dell towards AMD will it actually happen...

muddocktor

FAH_WW wrote:

I have mostly AMD gear at home, but also some Intel, and only when market forces push Dell towards AMD will it actually happen...

I agree with that, WW. If you would see HP and Sun gaining significant market share on Dell's server line due to their Opteron servers, I think you would see Dell start offering Opteron servers in a heartbeat, but they won't do it unless they see a significant loss of market share, IMO. They would have to write up a new support setup for Opteron servers and they won't go that route unless forced into it.