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Dell Rejects AMD Chips (again)
LarsWestergren writes "A few months ago Slashdot reported that Dell was considering using AMD for server CPUs, but most people rightly remained sceptical since Dell has announced this several times before and always backed out. Well, according to the Register you were right to be sceptical." From the article: "Dell, however, doesn't seem concerned by these pricing issues or the fact that Opteron outperforms Xeon on numerous benchmarks. 'We believe that Intel has responded,' Rollins said in the wire report. 'That is now beginning to put customers more at ease that they don't need to make a shift (to AMD).'"
If Dell doesn't want to switch to a better product then the question then becomes "why not switch away from Dell?"
They get Intel jealous by flirting with AMD and when Intels reluctantly lowers their price Dell goes back to Intel. It is likely that they would do to Microsoft with Linux or *BSD to get the price of Windows down.
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Dell at this point is entirely based on the business model of being the least alarming name out there. As a result, the companies they choose as vendors are the ones with the least alarming name. When you pay for a Dell you aren't playing for a functional computer, you're paying for the promise that there will be nothing exceptional about your computer whatsoever. This is what people want. Exceptional things are risky and scary.
Don't forget also that the key to Dell's performance is it's supply chain performance, which relies on just-in-time deliveries and vendor-managed inventory. It would be a huge operational risk to switch vendors like that, so AMD would have to provide more than just a better processor to win that business.
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How about one CPU being at least as 'fast' (in real world terms) as another mfger's CPU even though running at a lower clocks speed, and running significantly cooler and using a lot less power? AND it's less expensive than that rival mfger's CPU. Oh and it's 64 bit as opposed to the other mfger's CPU which is 32 bit.
Yes, you are a prick.
Well, three, eight, and six consecutively is a pretty distinct pattern. I don't know about you tin-foil hatters out there, but '386' is unique enough to claim as a trademark.
That's a nice opinion, but the court's opinion was the opposite of yours, and the two uses of the word "opinion" in this sentence have quite different meanings. Hint: You don't win.
Hence, the "Pentium", which was trademarkable. (Even if it was a rather wierd time to jump into that naming scheme, what with Sexium or Hexium (depending on who you ask) coming up next, which is also why we still have Pentiums. Think about how silly the name "Pentium 4" is if taken literally....)
And when the customers add up enough to be significant, they will switch.
As important as it is to you to have AMD, it really isn't for the majority of their customers.
Why would Dell stick with a product, if they could be more successful with a different product? What exactly are you suggesting? Some sort of conspiracy? They're deliberately making less profit, just to annoy AMD? Notify the stockholders, bring a lawsuit.
The gamerz who care only about FPS bragging rights, and the IT professionals who have to take Real Life operational requirements into consideration. My site operates thousands of workstations and scores of servers. They suck a ton of power, and the money for the electric bill comes out of my depts budget. CPUs which consume less power, and run cooler, while delivering the same amount (or more) of processing horsepower is of great interest. And 64 bit? Sure. Many of the WS's run Windows, but many more don't, and none of the servers do either. 64 bit is an important consideration to some. We aren't all playing games on overclocked Pentiums with boy-racer neon and twelve LED-equipped fans, knowing that mom and dad pay the bills.
Dell sells a great number of computers, but really, AMD needed OEMs during the days of the K5, and early days of the Athlon. since the Athlon grabbed the lead, and now since the Athlon64 is leading all CPUs, AMD really doesnt need Dell. Anyone looking for performance gets an Athlon64 server. Anyone looking for big-company machines gets IBM or Sun. Anyone looking for cheap servers would get Dell, unless they want to go real cheap in which case they'd choose a custom-built server using AMD (Dells cheapest server is $480, IBM's 206 is $500 CDN).
So really Dell is counting on Intel's special price-cuts for Dell for profits. As soon as that dries up, or if Intel provides such pricecuts to HP or the likes, Dell will simply have to get back to AMD.
Customers with brand-name loyalty will always go to IBM or sun, have never seen brand-name loyalty to HP or Dell. Either way AMD's lack of reliabiity is the last of reasons to not sell AMD
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Since this article is about servers: people who buy them do care if something is faster than something else at the same clockspeed, if it uses less power, and if it has a 32- or 64-bit architecture. And in that market, way more than 1% of the customers don't run Windows.
With so much bitching about how much Dell sucks and AMD is better blah blah blah, I thought I'd offer my experience.
First off, I have never dealt with Dell Home before, only Dell Small Business. Rumor has it that the latter division has better prices. What I needed was a 1U dual processor rack mount server. I needed it for a crazy low price because it was going to feed a donation-funded service, and I needed the hardware before I could wait for the cash. I looked at almost everyone I could find: HP and IBM were way too expensive for what I could find (their websites were kind of annoying too), random box vendors like Monarch wanted to charge me for shit like $80 to install Fedora (no thanks, I wanted Debian) and other stuff like silver grease for $15 per processor, and others like Penguin Computing who looked great but were just too expensive.
Ultimately it came down to some Dell 1U servers that were giving away free double hard drive capacity upgrades and double RAM on their magic rotating deals. Yeah, the deal changes and will probably be better next week, but what the hell. I bought two and waited.
The servers are very nice for the price. They come with wonderful stuff like BIOS level serial console redirection, too, that seems to be some super-cost option from random box builder. They're rock solid, very fast, and Dell builds them with Linux support in mind anyway. I bought mine with no OS, rather than paying some mystical install tax.
I like AMD processors as well as the next guy - all three desktop systems I've built have been AMD processors. But I went with Dell because they had what I needed with a price I was willing to pay for it. I am, by no means, a "cost is no object" player and I really don't have an extra $600 to fudge with.
Now, if I missed someone out there who can beat the $1500 price tag (I usually buy in multiples of two) of the Dells I have that uses Opteron processors, I will definately look at them for my next purchase. I prefer AMD, but the Xeons in my Dell servers will have to do.
As I sad at the beginning, maybe this isn't the case when you are looking for home computers or some workstations, but I buy Apple for that stuff, anyway. Mac for the desktop and iX86 for the rack. The Xserve is nice, but fscking expensive.
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Apple maintains a Darwin port on x86 because they recognize that keeping the core OS a cross-platform effort leads to better coding. It's a widely known tenent of software engineering that cross-platform coding 'forces the programmers to stay honest', i.e. keeps them from codifying the weird quirks and squeaks and bells of the target hardware. I doubt if Apple uses it as a 'threat' to make IBM nervous.
"but I seem to recall the Opteron systems were about 10-20% more expensive."
In terms of SMP performance, Opteron systems are about 80% faster that XEON systems. If you are going to run some sort of database on your server, an Opteron solution that is 10-20% more expensive would be worth it.
Have you even seen the reviews/benchmarks that compare the SMP XEON to SMP Opteron systems?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.