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).'"

Comments

Apparently, changing chip vendors is too much work

[ABeowulfCluster]

They'd have to actually track which chip goes in which board.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

If Dell doesn't want to switch to a better product then the question then becomes "why not switch away from Dell?"

Re:Well

[Qzukk]

Well, as the other coward pointed out, you need to justify it. In triplicate. With change control forms sent out at least a year in advance citing exactly what make and model hardware you're going to buy, why you're going to make the switch, and how much this change will increase the stock price (to the quarter-point). Once the change control has been reviewed and rejected twice, the boss's brother's daughter's husband's nephew's wife's niece's brother-in-law will suggest the same thing, at which point he'll be promoted and the change control will be accepted "for review" at which point you'll need to purchase the new equipment out of your own budget ("sorry, we can't requisition new equipment for you until the change control process is complete") after which you will need to document in entirety the process of setting up and installing the kit, along with months of testing to prove that the applications will even run on this "AMD Thingy", then ensure that the applications will not crash on this "completely unknown" architecture. Then, two years later, you will have completed the change control process and your AMD computers will be put into production (being, a model from two years ago). And when your boss's wife's father's second cousin's child's sister-in-law's (who doesn't even work at this company!) computer BSoD's, your head will roll!

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we're co-workers.

Re:Well

[xcfx]

That's of course your opinion. I know plenty of (IT) people who are more than happy with their Dell workstations and servers. If you don't like Intel and like AMD better, there are plenty of companies who offer AMD-based workstations and servers. Those are for you, Dell definitely isn't.

Re:Well

[innosent]

That's fine, but when one is clearly better than the other for even one task, or is at least the same at a significant cost savings, you should head in that direction. Forget about Intel and AMD, think about Front Side Bus/Northbridge/Southbridge vs. HyperTransport and NUMA. Server performance is greatly influenced by I/O speed and Memory bandwidth, and Intel's standard method simply doesn't work as well as AMD's (HyperTransport). Now, there ARE solutions to a large part of this Intel problem, but that involves expensive, proprietary motherboard configurations, and still can at best only partially alleviate the I/O bottleneck. Coupled with the lower cost of Opteron solutions as compared to Xeon, HyperTransport means an AMD vendor can offer more to the customer for less money AND more profit. I could see offering both (Think Sun, with SPARC and Opteron), but not limiting yourself to only the higher-cost, lower-performance architecture. If I were unfortunate enough to have purchased Dell stock on news they might actually do something intelligent, I'd sell now. No matter what the reason, making a business decision to stick with what you've got instead of at least offering a better alternative just doesn't make sense. Which reminds me, whatever happened to "you don't need the internet, you've got everything here" Compuserve? Prodigy?

Re:Well

[kesuki]

the boss's brother's daughter's husband's nephew's wife's niece's brother-in-law...

What, in 50 years? By your geneology, the "boss" is at least 3 generation before the "niece's brother-in-law." 'Be pretty lucky (for the "boss") to be alive, if the "brother-in-law" is old enough to work.

For, Boss's Age =X , for brothers age = X+14 While Brother's daughter's age = X-5 (+14-19) if Her Husband's age = X-7 , her 'husband's nephew could be X+7 , if he had an older sibling, naice can be any age, and have a brother in law witha commen deviation anywhere from x+-7.
As you see, mathematically it is possible for all the jumps in that statment to occur within a 2-generation gap of under 14 years, without any woman needing to have given birth to any child at any age under 19.

Next time you gripe, perhaps you should consider how complicated family relationships can be ;)
Just be greatful he didn't add any 'ex mother in-law fiancee's' into the list.

Re:Well

[man_of_mr_e]

Well, actually.. the new Xeon's are looking quite good compared to Opteron's for server work. Performance wise they seem to be kicking the Opteron's ass, and remember it too has x86-64 (EM64T).

Prices are still a little higher than opteron's, but then servers aren't usually sold on value.

Re:Well

[PSC]

And when your boss's wife's father's second cousin's child's sister-in-law's (who doesn't even work at this company!) computer BSoD's, your head will roll!

Apparently whoever moderated this does not work in the industry (yet). Otherwise, this entire post was moderated Insightful instead of Funny.

Oh, and sometimes it's not "your boss's wife's" whoever but Tom's Hardware Guide. Which is not much of an improvement, either.

Maybe I would laught, too, if I could only fight the need to cry :-(

Re:Well

[innosent]

Personally, I'm more of a roll-your-own type anyways. You can often buy two of a better system for the price of one from the big vendors, and if you pick your components wisely, you won't have any reliability problems. My personal favorites are of course the Opterons, the Supermicro motherboards for anything you can get one for, Tyan for the remaining AMDs, Adaptec or 3Ware RAID cards (depending on SCSI or SATA), Chenbro cases (great aluminum hot-swap drive trays, simple [less likely to break] latch mechanism, solid backplane engineering (often use optical grade plastics for extending LED indicators to the front panel, rather than running wires where they could be pinched by a drive), and hot swap fans everywhere), and Zippy n+1 redundant power supplies (those little tiny PSU bricks are the easiest thing I've seen to change, and I haven't even had to change one yet).

Logical

[MarkRose]

So another large PC manufacturer remains with dellinquent chips. Wait a minute -- that kinda makes sense.

Re:Logical

[sosegumu]

It's Dell. They make inferior computers for people who don't know anything beyond how to turn it on.

A recent exchange:

Customer: Wow, that system your company built for us seems much faster than the other one we have--and it was even less expensive. Was there some sort of mistake?

Me: No mistake. It's because we only use AMD Athlon 64 processors in the computers we build. Your Dimension has an Intel Pentium processor which isn't nearly as fast and costs much more.

Customer: What? How can that be? Are you saying that you produce a better system for less money.

Me: Yep.

Customer (indignantly): Your system can't be faster than the Dimension--it's a Dell.

Me: ...Sigh...

Re:Logical

[IceFox]

So why don't you raise your prices for customers like that? They are begging to pay more for better performance and think something is wrong when it doesn't happen.

Re:Logical

[dying_sucks]

That's right. Dell is just for people who don't know anything and are like "ooh, a pc for $400, that sounds great". You get what you pay for. Now if you're looking at the XPS, you're gonna get ripped. If I was gonna spend $2000 on a computer, I'd buy an Alienware that's way better and looks cooler too; or better yet build your own that's top of the line for half the price.

Dell will never use AMD

[rudy_wayne]

In the '80s Intel sued AMD, twice, for producing 80386 compatible chips. The second time was for trademark infringement, essentially claiming that Intel owned the number '386'. One of the people testifying on behalf of Intel was Michael Dell.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[xeon4life]

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.

If you used three numbers to identify a major product of yours, wouldn't you be a little peeved if someone else was using it too?

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[yem]

He's not saying the trademark is without merit. He's saying Mr Dell is deep in Intel's pocket, and wont be cooperating with AMD any time soon.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[Johnathon_Dough]

I'll bite.

Because Google the company spells it's name different than googol the number.

from Google: 1 googol = 1.0 × 10 to the 100 power

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[Billly Gates]

Does Intel own Dell stock or vice versa?

This is looking kind of fishy if you ask me and strange. Sure a company has the right to ship whichever chips its wants but it surely does not make business sense right now for Dell.

Price conscience IT departments wont like the price for a SMP Xeon server compared to an SMP Opteron.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[Anonymous Coward]

386 was not a trademark for Intel. It was a part number. The court ruled that part numbers could not be trademarked.

You can trademark words, so long as they are not in common use in the field that you are trademarking them for. Evidence, Mustang and Pinto.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[mattdm]

That's not even necessary. (Look at Microsoft's trademark on "Windows", for example!)

Trademarks based on real words are in general harder to defend, and trademarks that *are* real words even harder, but there's certainly millions of them.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[ThisIsFred]

When you can't compete on price or performance, just block your competitors from shipping their products to manufacturers. I guess if this is a valid way to do business, we can rent some jersey barriers and place them all around a particular site in Redmond.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[wfberg]

This is looking kind of fishy if you ask me and strange. Sure a company has the right to ship whichever chips its wants but it surely does not make business sense right now for Dell.

Price conscience IT departments wont like the price for a SMP Xeon server compared to an SMP Opteron.

What's to say that Dell isn't paying the same for a Xeon as they would for an Opteron? And pocketing the change? That's why it makes business sense.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[Jerf]

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....)

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[HeghmoH]

I get peeved when people talk too loudly while taking public transportation, but I hardly think it should be illegal.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If you used three numbers to identify a major product of yours, wouldn't you be a little peeved if someone else was using it too?

As another poster already mentioned, this was settled in court in favor of AMD. Intel claimed they owned the rights to the "name" 386. The court said that under U.S. law you cannot copyright universally used terms which are in the public domain. This includes numbers, so nobody can copyright 286, 386, 486, etc. As the other poster also mentioned, the next generation chip was about to be named 586 and we know how that changed. At the time PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak wrote that Intel went through an extensive naming/copyright search and paid lawyers and marketing people millions of dollars to come up with the name Pentium. Dvorak joked that the name sounds more like a toothpaste brand than a name for a CPU.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[mabhatter654]

Dell is the biggest PC vendor only because the "bend over" to whatever the MS/intel douopoly wants. To Intel or Microsoft Dell is a nice marketing outsourcing unit, but if they go rouge, both companies will make an "example" of Dell. Dell is a truely competitve company...anybody can replace them overnight. If anybody's hurt by MS & intel's practices it's Dell, because they can't choose their products freely...deviate too much and their toast. But of course, Dell can't say anything... because then they'd instantly be paying "retail" price for windows...or be told to stop selling it. Same with Intel, Dell is "gauranteed" to always get first cut of the chips... they could be "punished" by intel simply missing a shipment of "latest and greatest" causing all the gearheads to buy compaqs instead.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[Afrosheen]

Don't tell this to Subaru with their new japan-only WRX 302 model.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[croddy]

well, to be fair, google is a play on words. googol + ogle = google.

like, looking at bazillions of web pages.

oh, nevermind.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[Hoser McMoose]

Actually, no '386' is NOT unique enough to claim as a trademark, that was the ruling every time Intel tried to claim that it was. Now 'i386' IS a trademark, and that's exactly how the Intel chips were actually sold. However AMD was perfectly free to produce 'AM386' processors.

The answer was quite simply to not use a number to identify a major product... hence the name "Pentium"

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[cowbutt]

Price conscience IT departments wont like the price for a SMP Xeon server compared to an SMP Opteron.

Actually, as someone who's just priced up a couple of specifications for beefy x86 machines recently, the Xeon-based system came out somewhat cheaper; the systems were as similar as I could get (one with 4GB RAM, a single ATA disc, the other with 8GB RAM and 4x143GB SCSI discs RAIDed). The Xeon-based systems were both 2xXeon 3.2 Nocona (1MB L2), the Opteron-based systems were both 2xOpteron 250 2.4GHz. I don't have the quotes in front of me, but I seem to recall the Opteron systems were about 10-20% more expensive.

Further, of our preferred vendors, only Sun sold Opteron based machines, and their Opteron systems are significantly more expensive to us than the same Newisys hardware bought from other vendors.

Finally, all but Sun's v40z/Newisys 4300 were limited in terms of 133MHz PCI-X slots. This is important for the role for which the 4GB machine is to be used.

I remain open to Opterons, and I really like the idea of each CPU having its own memory bus. But now that AMD are doing all the same sorts of things that Intel do with their platform (as opposed to merely CPU offerings), you can't assume that the Opteron systems will be cheaper, or even better value than similar Xeon systems.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[sheddd]

Assuming Intel doesn't come up with a breakthrough soon (next couple years), I don't think Dell will have a choice.

It seems we're going to a Multi-core world and Intel's current implementation is severely handicapped by memory speed; Also, their 64 bit implementation is a hack.

When Win64 is out (June?) AMD is going to be much more attractive for servers. I'd bet Dell will be shipping AMD this year.

I'm sure Dell's getting great deals on Intel chips because they're buying no AMD... kinda like Wall-Mart pressuring their suppliers. 'Gimme a sweet deal or I'll persue other suppliers'.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[drgonzo59]

How exactly is that a 'pretty distinct pattern'? Distinct from what? For any 3 digit number, there is about 0.1% chance that that number will be 386. Why can't a company who's product reached version 1.0.386 sell or market it as 386. What about 001, that is just as distict as 386, can any one claim it as a trademark. How about number 10? Can I trademark that and sue everyone? The point is, that the claim doesn't make any sense, and that is why Intel came up with the name 'Pentium'. In this case, for 26 letters of the alphabet, you have 26^7 = 7 or 8 billion possible trademark names of that lenght. That is a lot better even if 75% of those is unpronounceable, meaningless garbage.

The drug companies, that have hundreds and thousands of product on the market are running into this problem, they are sometimes using Latin names now to generate all those funky wierd names (Levitra, Alegra, Vioxx, Paxil etc, etc.), they have to be short, unique and easy to pronounce and memorize, there is a whole field of study in that area of brand marketing.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[toadlife]

"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?

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[rudy_wayne]

"He's not saying the trademark is without merit. He's saying Mr Dell is deep in Intel's pocket, and wont be cooperating with AMD any time soon."

Actually, the trademark *IS* without merit. The PTO ruled that a number is not a valid trademark and Intel lost the case.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[lawpoop]

What's so silly about '54'?

Seriously, is Pentium IV any sillier than Pentium II or III?

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[fm6]

That would be a valid point if Michael Dell made all decisions for Dell Computer by himself. But he doesn't. And even if he did, he wouldn't be a very good CEO if he made decision like this one based solely on his personal relationships.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[innosent]

But that's the point, it's not just personal. They have economic ties as well. Each probably owns stock in the other, and Intel and Microsoft both have deep discounts for Dell as long as they play along. Since switching to Opteron hurts Intel, Intel will threaten to raise prices, and since switching to Opteron NOW hurts Microsoft (since Windows/SQL/Office/everything they have for 64-bit isn't really ready yet), Microsoft will threaten to raise prices. I'm sure at this point it would probably even breach some contracts that they have with both companies, but in the long run, it would probably still be worth it, it just might be hard to see that when you're staring at price hikes from your two major suppliers, especially when so much of your own money is at stake.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[cowbutt]

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.

That would indeed be sound reasoning, if that was reflected by the benchmarks I saw.

Have you even seen the reviews/benchmarks that compare the SMP XEON to SMP Opteron systems?

The ones on Anandtech (find by doing an 'advanced' search for 'opteron xeon' as 'all these words')?

If so, yes, I did. The benchmarks I saw (Sep 13 2004) led me to infer that a 2xXeon 3.2 1MB system would be at most 15% slower than a system with 2xOpteron 2.4s. Further, in order to get prices that were no more than 10% higher than the comparable Xeon system, we'd need to buy from a non-preferred vendor. Sun were far worse due to the need to go with a v40z for >1 133MHz PCI-X slots in one machine and >2 discs in the other, and that was with our discount (admittedly, the v40z is expandable to 4-way). :(

I'd be very interested in seeing better benchmarks for future reference, particularly if they use x86_64 Linux, Apache, MySQL/PostgreSQL, etc as the benchmark platform, rather than Windows.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[kernelistic]

This would be true... If it weren't for the fact that the Opteron can run regular x86 binaries (And operating systems) in its 32-bit mode.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[geminidomino]

If I remember correctly, the courts disagreed with you. That's why the 80586 was branded "Pentium" since that COULD be trademarked.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[toadlife]

the benchmarks I saw where the opteron killed the xeon *were* x86-64 Linux/apache/mysql benchmrks.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[cowbutt]

Without giving pointers to the benchmarks you've seen, continuing this discussion is somewhat pointless.

Something I will note is that Intel have responded to competition from the Opteron and significantly revised the design of the Xeon several times now - upping the memory bus from 400MHz to 533MHz to 800MHz with the current models. Further, the amount of cache varies dramatically too; from 256KB L2+512KB L3 to 512KB L2+4MB L3 to 2MB L2 + 0MB L3 - this table gives you the rundown. Saying 'Opteron beats Xeon by x%' isn't really very informative unless you specify which model of Xeon you're talking about.

Finally, unless I'm wearing my computer systems architecture hat (I still have a soft spot for it, as it was my official degree title :), I don't care about performance/clock cycle, only about performance/£. Systems based around AMD's chips generally thrash Intel's on the former, whilst not always being so convincing on the latter (usually due to higher chipset/motherboard prices, IME).

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[toadlife]

Here http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=scp uso&page=7&cookie%5Ftest=1

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[toadlife]

Note - those aren't the benchmarks I've seen before that inlcude mysql.

Your issue appears to be that you will ony buy from a select few vendors. We buy from HP only, and their Opteron systems are cheaper than their XEON systems accross the board.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[cowbutt]

Your issue appears to be that you will ony buy from a select few vendors.

Yeah, that's a bit of it; potentially any vendor is possible, providing our preferred vendors don't sell what we want (e.g. our preferred x86 supplier hasn't launched their full range of EM64T Xeons yet, so we're going to buy from Dell instead). But there's the 'no-one ever got fired for buying X' situation; if your recommendation doesn't work out...

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[cowbutt]

Right, that benchmark tests the old 533MHz FSB Xeons with the old E7501 chipset.

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[toadlife]

Sorry...I wasn't looking too hard.

Perhaps the newer XEONs wih the huge on chip caches and faster FSBs fair better. I did another google, and every benchmark I find is rather old. I did find one newer one, but it only does a tiny set of tests on *one* platform with *one* product. THe newer benchmark does show the Intel doing better in some areas and the opteron doing better in others, but it's hard to compare it to older benchmarks because the old ones don't do these tests.

Here is the 'new' benchmark I found:
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i =2347

Anyhow - good luck to you. :)

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[cowbutt]

Sorry...I wasn't looking too hard.

S'ok! ;-)

Perhaps the newer XEONs wih the huge on chip caches and faster FSBs fair better. I did another google, and every benchmark I find is rather old. I did find one newer one, but it only does a tiny set of tests on *one* platform with *one* product. THe newer benchmark does show the Intel doing better in some areas and the opteron doing better in others, but it's hard to compare it to older benchmarks because the old ones don't do these tests. Here is the 'new' benchmark I found: http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2347

The anandtech ones have been the most useful comparisions that I've found. That said, benchmarks are only really a pointer; the only true test is to use your code as the benchmark. Unfortunately, I don't have the budget to buy one of each. I would love to spend a day or two benchmarking an Opteron system against a comparable Xeon system.

Anyhow - good luck to you.

Cheers!

Re:Dell will never use AMD

[innosent]

Right, but you don't spend the money on the latest-and-greatest just to run it in "compatibility" mode. So unless Dell seriously wants to push high-end servers and serious cluster compute nodes (which they don't seem to want to do), there's really no point.

Dell is back to their old trick...

[Krankheit]

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.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[ravenspear]

It is likely that they would do to Microsoft with Linux or *BSD to get the price of Windows down.

I don't think so. You can't compare those two situations. That trick would never work with M$ because M$ knows that Dell could never dump them. The average computer buyer problably isn't going to care if they order a new computer from Dell and they are told that the chip it has is from AMD because Dell decided they were better than Intel. However, the average buyer will most definitely NOT tolerate Dell telling them that they can only order a computer with Linux because Dell decided it was better than Windows. If Dell wants to remain the number one vendor it has no choice but to offer Windows, therefore it will pay whatever price M$ demands.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[bdsesq]

Its not quite that simple. Look at what Dvorak says in his latest column--- Intel has been essentially paying OEMs not to use AMD chips.
You can read the rest at http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050224. html
Its about half way down the page.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[mattyrobinson69]

i dunno - if they said to the customer "we dont use windows anymore - its crap, this is much better", the _average_ customer would just assume the dell guy is right because they dont have a clue (never heard of linux). Linux is a bit of a buzzword nowadays, so if he has heard of it, he'd act knowlegable and say "does it support xml" or something equally stupid.

there'd be hell to pay when he got home and couldn't install his porn dialers though.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[isecore]

Intel has been essentially paying OEMs not to use AMD chips.

Well, that would explain why Intel-chips are much more pricey.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[DustMagnet]

MDF pays for marketing and pays for retail shelf space.

You can see how is taking these "kick-backs". The marketing part requires "Intel Inside" on TV commercials. Next time you hear that music, you'll know what's up.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Which is why I proudly purchased an AMD Athlon 64 for my new machine a couple of months back. My previous machine built in '98 had Intel in it, and back then it was important for compatibility, but it's not any more.

Screw Intel and their shady practices.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[budgenator]

you'd be amazed at how many people think a monitor is the computer.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[budgenator]

yeah but intel and/or microsoft can give them a kick back on advertising cost if they flash the logo's, which amounts t6o the same thing.

Re:Dell is back to their old trick...

[shanen]

Naw, it's just that Dell's motto is "Good enough is good enough", and Intel CPUs are good enough.

In other words...

[jmcmunn]

Dell found cheaper prices for Intel boards/processors and whatnot, and can keep their bargain basement prices without switching vendors. All this means is that they can keep winning the price wars without switching...

Side note:
Oh and anyone who still needs a Gmail account...feel free to drop by my page. I have over 600 of them posted. Free for the taking...

http://www.jiggybyte.com/gmail

Enjoy...

Re:In other words...

[TopShelf]

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.

Re:In other words...

[Hoser McMoose]

That's quite important, but a secondary key factor to Dell's business model, which ties into the above, is the absolute minimization of options. Dell does everything in their power to offer as few possible configuration options as is possible while still providing the illusion of customization. Most important to this are parts that require revalidating all components for a new machine, ie the motherboard. Since AMD chips require different motherboards that Intel chips, there is a definite added cost to using their chips.

In the end though, it doesn't really make one lick of difference. Both Intel and AMD make perfectly good chips. It's not even like Dell is paying more money for Intel chips, because with the quantities that they buy them in and the HUGE discounts they get there is absolutely no chance that AMD could significantly undercut their prices.

If you're buying a DIY machine, then AMD is almost alway the best choice, but for a machine from a big OEM it doesn't make a difference. Even performance isn't going tto be affected much one way or the other since the big OEMs use such bargain-basement crap components for damn near everything.

Re:In other words...

[akuma(x86)]

AMD offers a very compelling server CPU, but it is unclear if they can supply Dell as reliably as Intel. AMD has concentrated risk in one or two fabs while Intel has several fabs.

Also, it is more complex/expensive/disruptive to maintain 2 different motherboard/chipset combinations. 64 bits is not a good reason since Intel has x86-64 support now. AMD performance is better but not enought to offset the operational risk. The AMD solution doesn't enable a platform that Intel could not also provide (albeit at lower performance).

Translation

[Jameth]

"That is now beginning to put customers more at ease that they don't need to make a shift (to AMD)."

- or -

We are Intel's customer, and now that they gave us a dumptruck full of money, we are quite at ease.

HAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

First Microsoft will only allow re-installs/product activation of XP via phone support, now Dell won't use AMD's incredible processors. Let Dell and Microsoft both fade into irrelevancy. Christmas in February! I love it.

Why?

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

If this was for a technical reason, i guess i'm wondering what that reason was (mainly because i only run AMD at home and would really like to know).

Anyone know why? Or did Intel stop by and mention something special is in the works?

Re:Why?

[rpozz]

Yeah. One major technical reason. The majority of systems that Dell sells are workstation machines. They just run Windows 2K/XP, and Microsoft Office. Thus, they don't need the 64-bit mode, or the speed increase AMD offers.

AMD doesn't produce the chipsets, nor has the fabrication facilities of Intel, so overall, Intel provides the better deal. While an Opteron is a no-brainer for a server, I think it's safe to assume that their use of Xeons is a side-effect of their deals with Intel when making workstations.

Re:Why?

[ArbitraryConstant]

I think it's a combination.

-The prices Dell gets for Intel processors and chipsets and other parts make AMD look expensive.
-Dealing with greater variety of processors and other parts increases overhead for manufacturing and support.
-Prejudice in the industry left over from earlier generations of AMD chips that weren't as solid.
-AMD chips are performing very well everywhere right now, but the difference is big enough for big customers to start switching mostly on big multi-processor systems, which is a tiny minority of all the computers out there (though the margins are nice).

Re:Apparently, changing chip vendors is too much w

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe dell has used amd to leverage a better deal from intel. we've seen the same thing happen with linux/open source and microsoft. organisations announce they are considering the former until microsoft jumps in with massive price reductions.

Customers are already making a shift.

[BoomerSooner]

I use AMD processors in some of my servers and am evaluating purcahsing a new rack full of hardware for migrating off our current servers (mix of AMD & Intel) that are tower based. Monarch Computers (Linux Journal runs on them) is pretty reasonable but I'm also looking at the Sun offerings.

I like Dell computers reasonably well. However we have decided to go with AMD for multiple reasons. Unfortunately they don't offer what we are looking for and as a result have lost about a $30,000 purchase. Granted 30K is peanuts to them but over time it adds up, one customer here, one customer there.

Their slogan should be "Dell, providing what we say you need, not what you desire." Hell, even their linux offerings are a joke (workstation side).

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[anandrajan]

Monarch Computers (Linux Journal runs on them) is pretty reasonable but I'm also looking at the Sun offerings.

We evaluated quite a few vendors recently as well. When buying say a terabyte linux file server, make sure to get adequate cooling, good sturdy chassises etc. For example, Monarch would not let us pick a CIdesign chassis which has a good reputation, so we didn't go with them.

At the very least talk to Net Express They are very knowledgable when it comes to putting together custom linux servers.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Net Express.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[spideyct]

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.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[Afrosheen]

A quick glance over their site shows they're just as Intel-centric as Dell is! What gives?

The only AMD stuff they offer is _workstations_. Weak.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[FatherOfONe]

Wow you hit the nail on the head and I don't believe you truely realize it.

In my experience companies only change when there is pain involved. By then it is usually too late to lead in a new area. They go in to "protective" mode instead of the risk taking that made them large in the first place. Heck it even applies to how they manage their employees.

So, it is easy for Dell to stay with Intel, until they suffer some pain. They will go in to the "protection" mode for as long as they can and "if" AMD continues to gain traction in the industry then Dell will eventually switch but they will give some other Dell wanabee the traction needed to be a serious competitor in the future. They have the ability to stop it now, but alas they won't.

Kinda like IBM could have gone direct to consumer before Dell did and have stopped Dell from becomming what they are now.

Lastly, as I said before this goes far more than just AMD, it has to do with the entire culture of a lot of companies. They will do things like screw their employees as much as possible, to the point until it begins to hurt their bottom line.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[rcamans]

Dell's market share and sales increased again this quarter, as it has in most all the past quarters for many years.
That is because of very many satisfied customers, steadily improving quality which is better than the big competitors (according to the big surveys), better customer satisfaction than the big competitors (according to the big surveys), etc.
So according to a very large number of customers, Dell sells what the customers need, not just what they say they want.
Hmm, actual facts seem to contradict the BS opinions of the Big Guy Bashers.

I suppose now that IBM is a good guy, you all will have to go back to raving about IBM PCs.
I do not understand why that hasn't already occurred.
Doesn't IBM ship AMD?
Seems to me it is a rave made in heaven, according to you AMD fanatics.
Linux loving, AMD shipping IBM.
Funny I am the first to even mention it.
HP ships AMD, too.
Why are they both loosing market share to Dell?

What shift?

Oh, I am a Dell server design engineer.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[spideyct]

I hit the nail on the head AND I realized it ;)

And I disagree with your conclusion.

Dell's success in the past has been based on this same strategy. Give the customers what they want, when they (the "collective they", not the "specific they") want it. That is what the direct model allows them to do, better than anyone. Let other companies create new products and convince customers they need them. If enough customers are convinced and come asking for a product, Dell will sell it. Being the "first mover" is not the advantage you think it is. Dell isn't the #1 seller of computers because they did it before IBM or HP, it is because they did it better.

Your last point is completely off topic. Developing a strategy for your product line has nothing to do with how you treat your employees.

Dell is not the single source of computers in the world. There is no mandate that they must offer any and every product under the sun. If they choose not to offer AMD, Cyrix, Motorola, or SpideyCTX86 chips, it is probably because their analysis shows that the investment would not be worth the reward. They are not morally obligated to entertain every potential part supplier's product. Choosing not to offer a product does not mean they are more likely to "screw their employees". In fact, I'd probably argue the opposite: if they tried to offer every product under the sun, they wouldn't be very successful for very long. What do you think THAT would do to their employees?

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[Shadow99_1]

Well they could make a good bit more off of using AMD in key areas, but Intel pays them (literally) to not do so. For years and years now Intel has paid a large portion of any PC vendors marketing costs if the hold to some strict guidelines from Intel about what they sell... This is a big reason why Dell ads are everywhere, since they have a large pool of money to spend on them that is a 'gift' from Intel... All that not factoring in pricing deals on core parts (CPU & chipsets) that Intel gives them...

This is why alot of other companies still make a whole lot of Intel based systems and few AMD ones... The more AMD they use the more money they have to spend on basics like advertising and component costs for those Intel parts. Unfortunately AMD just can't match what Intel does for Vendors and that is the biggest reason they can't match Intel in the market with Vendors...

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[the big v]

I typically purchase about $15k to $30k of servers from Dell each year. Last December I asked them to guarantee to me that the server I was preparing to purchase (about $8k for one box) would perform like I needed (very high I/O speed), given that the similar one I got a year ago was barely keeping up with the load I needed.

Others with similar hardware were getting more than double the I/O performance, but were not using Dells. They had no answers for me other than 'trust us'. When I asked about AMD solutions which others had reported providing the necessary speed, they just more or less did the equivalent of staring at me over the phone.

I ended up buying an Opteron system from Iron Systems which has more then met the challenge. They are about to get yet another order for an identical system. That's $16k to Iron, and $16k less for Dell. Not to mention that they've lost my server business... probably close to $30k this year.

So it will add up. They can't keep ignoring Opteron.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[hb253]

Well, I hate to insult you, but Dell servers are designed like crap. One example, 2650 with hot-plug power supplies that fail quite often, and that you can't remove without pulling the server out of the rack and opening the cover?? Take a look at the inside of a Compaq. The materials are better, the chassis is solid, not flimsy tinfoil, etc etc.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[Cthefuture]

I'm curious, what type of AMD system are you running?

I like the Opteron, and I'm typing this on an Opteron machine, but even though the processor is good I have yet to find a decent motherboard (at least anything close to what you can get on the Intel side). I mean, Intel has some high quality chipsets and their are plently of high quality Intel boards (either made by Intel or other makers). AMD doesn't appear to have much of anything from what I've seen.

For me this had been the main problem I have had with using AMD. The processors are decent but everything else sucks because AMD leaves it up to others to create the supporting hardware.

But I didn't buy my system as a system, I built it myself. I know some places like HP offer complete Opteron systems. I wonder what motherboards they use.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[reassor]

Saying "Unfortunately they don't offer what we are looking for and as a result have lost about a $30,000 purchase." is IMHO stupid.Even if they offer you things you want,you will always find a point to not buy from them (e.g. others are cheaper or so).Your "real" Meaning shines directly between the lines.Dell dont offer AMD since they started 10 years ago(?).Saying,they lost Money on things they never offered or will be offering,is just no good.Just look elsewhere,it is just that easy and dont complain here.
Since Toyoto never offered a H1 Hummer-like Vehicle,saying they lost 100k$ on a lost Sales,makes you or me look stupid.

I live in the Present and constructing something in the Future (if they sell AMD,i would buy from them),shows a new "Style of Life",i discovered.It basicly says" i am too stupid and blame others for things they wont do or they make". I hope this will end soon.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[TheLink]

Uh Microsoft has done this lots and they aren't that unsuccessful.

The secret is they actually do listen to their customers eventually. And give them what they can put up with.

Dell DOES listen. I believe Dell shifted back some of their support centres to North America after they got lots of complaints.

HP didn't.

I don't think Dell are stupid. So far Intel is probably giving them VERY VERY good reasons to stay Intel-only. I'm sure they can work out the dollars and cents.

I suspect they probably even show the "Opteron requests" in one form or another to Intel. So just keep asking Dell for Opterons if you want to turn up the heat on Intel ;).

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[TheLink]

Apple sold what its customers now know they want.

Dell sells what its customers would put up with :). (Just like Microsoft).

But HP sold (or at least tried to sell) what it's ex-CEO and gang thought it should sell.

IBM? I don't know IBM. But it seems IBM sells complexity (or gives it away for free) so that it can sell services.

When customers get too close to not putting up with stuff, Dell changes. Just like cancelling that outsource to India thing.

I suspect that Intel-Dell deal is really really sweet. I wonder if there are get-out/compensation clauses and what they are...

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[TheLink]

Hmm. I wonder what happened to the ServerWorks chipset for Opteron:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1604929,00. as p

I believe Dell uses ServerWorks for many of their servers.

Re:Customers are already making a shift.

[anandrajan]

The site is really dated. They will build and configure just about any type of linux box with AMD chips if you want.

When you buy Dell you're buying a name

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:When you buy Dell you're buying a name

[disposable60]

That was exceptionally well said.

Re:When you buy Dell you're buying a name

[Billly Gates]

I heard this argument before.

First it was you are buying an IBM! Then, but you are buying a SGI! Then sun.... etc

Look where they are now? IBM just sold their whole PC business away.

Brand names only get you so far in the long term. HP right now is begining to lose its once huge brand name image and Dell will too as the other former giants listed above.

In the pc world you innovate or you die. Brand name will give you more breathing space but you end up at the same place.
\

Get off the bandwagon and on with the future

[L0J46K]

AMD has been creeping on Intel's market share since I can remember. Who in their right mind is going to spend the money on a Wintel server from Dell when they can put something serious together from other sources or all by themselves.

Why use an inferior product? There must be some serious kickback from Intel for Dell to lock themselves in.

Re:Get off the bandwagon and on with the future

[discstickers]

Because most people don't know it exists.

Re:Get off the bandwagon and on with the future

[TheLink]

That's because if you are Company X when you need to buy 20 servers you don't want to build them by hand and deal with the faulty parts.

After all Company X is NOT in the server assembling and delivery business. Neither is your IT department.

Dell is.

And Dell stuff isn't _that_ crap. In fact I dislike HP and Compaqs more for their proprietary BIOS/drivers/crap. That Dells are closer to clones to me isn't such a minus.

You can go build your server part by part if you only need a few every couple of years. But you're not much of a market. And so I doubt Dell cares as much about you.

All About the Pentiums, Baby

[Bendy Chief]

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

Now, what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?
What??

http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/itsallaboutthepen ti ums.html

Re:All About the Pentiums, Baby

[FidelCatsro]

"What kind of chip you got in there a dorito "
I am sorry but dell only supply intel brand x86 procesors

Intel, Dell and AMD.

[Krankheit]

Perhaps Intel processors are easier to support (overheating perhaps just makes an Intel chip slowdown or reset, and AMD chips become damaged?). But IMNSHO if Dell wants to keep their server market share, I think they should be using AMD. Italium isn't selling. Even if Intel did lose Dell as a customer for Pentium 4, it wouldn't hurt Intel much. Intel still has alot of other cool things like PCI Express to keep them going. I think in the future Intel will stop so much precedence on their CPUs and focus more on complimentary components like PCI Express.

Re:Intel, Dell and AMD.

[killa62]

Actually, Intel Chips Throttle, and amd chips throttle too.
List of procesors which throttle:
Anything after pentium 3
Anything after AMD 64

Re:Intel, Dell and AMD.

[mattyrobinson69]

if athlon-xp's overheat, they turn off. I know this because i (very, very stupidly) put the heatsink on the wrong way (how?!?) on my gf's shiney new athlon-xp2800+ and spent about three hours trying to work out why it would beep a few times then turn off during the compile of xorg

Re:Intel, Dell and AMD.

[Shadow99_1]

Err Athlon XP chips can throttle to... & Mobile MAD chips have had better clock rate controls since the K6-3...

Re:Intel, Dell and AMD.

[Hoser McMoose]

First off, if a CPU fan dies on an Intel chip, the system will crash. If a fan dies on an AMD chip, the system will crash. There REALLY and truly is no difference between how these two behave. Intel's "clock throttling" will not, in ANY way at all, prevent a processor from overheating if the fan dies. The system will NOT keep running at a reduced speed without a CPU fan.

As for the other stuff, check out Intel's balance sheet sometime. They are actually much MORE dependant on x86 processors than AMD is. For AMD their revenue is split about 60/40 between processors and flash. For Intel it's about 75% x86 processors and 25% for everything else they build. It's even worse if you look at their profits, considering EVERY other division of Intel loses boatloads of money, but they make such a HUGE amount of money from their x86 processor sales that it not only negates those other loses, it makes the company as a whole very profitable.

Ohh, and Dell accounts for a very large percentage of Intel's chip sales, probably on the order of 15-20% of total sales. When that works out to several billion dollars a year, it's definitely no pocket change.

Monarch

[Noksagt]

The boss usually likes to buy through Dell, as it is a name he trusts. I haven't minded, as fatwallet has often pointed me to fantastic deals & I could look good by stretching the buck as far as it went.

We recently needed to get non-SMP machines which could address massive amounts of memory. Dell's anti-AMD stance made this exceedingly difficult. Instead, we ordered through Monarch. They are fantastic! The prices are fair--not so cheap as build-your-own & not as cheap as the outrageous Dell deals that sometimes pop up, but very fair. They are also Linux-friendly & have excellent support. The boss was impressed with how far the buck stretched for top-of-the-line workstations (though Dell would be better for entry-level) & we've placed more orders through them.

Re-reading my own glowing review makes it seem a bit over the top, but I really have no other connection to Monarch aside from being an exceedingly happy customer. They're worth a try if you want AMD machines.

Re:Monarch

[Mishra100]

Thats neat. When I was researching my desktop computer I ended up finding monarch computers and bought my stuff from them. It will works great after years and their support was just fine. Everything was smooth. Of course this was only for one desktop but I thought I would comment.

Re:Monarch

[sheddd]

Another good response for 8anet... the sales rep I've worked with will get stuff to you fast if you need it fast... good white boxes (at least the 5 or 10 I've bought).

Sometimes it's hard to figure out how to get periphs (like a x port serial card) in a 1u box; It's nice to be able to talk to a vendor who know's their stuff and doesn't charge a lot!

Huh?

[AdityaG]

Why is it that we always have these big companies that we simply rant on. Think. Dell is a company. They want to make money. People are buying their computers. Why would they bother switching? Even if switching to AMD would be cheaper, I don't see why everyone treats this as some big conspiracy. So Dell supports Intel. Is that wrong? They can do whatever the hell they want with their products and choose to support whatever companies.

Re:Why would they switch to a cheaper chip?

[Samari711]

Basic economics, you lower the price relying on more people to end up buying. Even though you might be making less money per unit if the conditions are right you'll be moving more units and making greater profit overall. That is all assuming profit is a % of the total cost and not a static amount tacked on to the end price.

I'm sure the bean counters went over every aspect of both scenarios and determined that sticking with Intel would yeild the most profit at the lowest risk.

Why?

[dtfinch]

With fewer choices, some potential customers will just look elsewhere (again).

AMD lacks high volume manufacturing capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, I love AMD and believe the Athlon and Opteron products are far and away superior products. They're way out in front for the scientific code that I write.

However, AMD has a serious problem: even if everyone suddenly decided to dump Intel and go with AMD, it couldn't be done. AMD just doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to churn out the volume necessary to completely displace Intel. That might be comforting to Intel, because they can pretty much do anything they want, i.e. churn out inferior, high priced product, for well into the future and not worry about losing significant market share. The only way for AMD to become the dominant processor manufacturer is to slowly and PROFITABLY chip away at Intel's share, and continue investing in new plants and partners (like IBM) to produce Athlons and Opterons. Unfortunately, AMD is still on rocky ground financially. Even as we speak, they are systematically closing down their chip fabs for one week stints as a cost saving measure. I want AMD to succeed, but it is going to be much harder than some fanboys think.

Re:AMD lacks high volume manufacturing capacity

[beelsebob]

They're way out in front for the scientific code that I write.
Really... Power 5

Re:AMD lacks high volume manufacturing capacity

[Shadow99_1]

Ya know what's really funny about your argument that AMD just couldn't make enough chips?

They make currently somewhere between 25 & 35% of all cpu's in the x86 market... From one chip fab.

Intel owns something like 13 fabs to make the other 65-75% of that same market...

If AMD did need to increase fabs that badly I'm sure Intel would be happy to cut their loses and sell one or more of their sub-par fabs... Even if they didn't AMD has a handy fab resource in IBM which could easily fab chips for them by contract...

Re:AMD lacks high volume manufacturing capacity

[james_in_denver]

Ya know another funny thing about your argument, is that for 3 consecutive months last year AMD actually fabbed and sold MORE cpus than Intel.....

Dell is falling

[jack_canada]

DELL isn't gonna stay in the desktop PC business too long if they don't change their strategies a bit. DELL machines and parts are way over-priced, customers are getting smarter and smarter. Those smart enough probably won't buy a DELL.

Re:Dell is falling

[Rakarra]

Dell has some of the best designed cases on the market

You're kidding me, right? They may have a number of things going for them, but that terrible swing-open case is not one of them. IBM unfortunately has been slipping in case design as well. Amazingly, for workstations it seems like the most well-designed cases come from HP.

I contacted Dell about a 750k rack server purchase

[Anonymous Coward]

but told them that they absolutely needed to be opteron based (we do mostly processor bound simulations for a DOD client). The sales droid said they would take our specifications and get back to me. About a week later, I get a phone call saying that their wonderful 3.2ghz P4 solution was perfect for our application. So I politely thanked him for the call and bought the systems from another vendor.

Whatever Intel is doing for them, it must be pretty good...

Does Dell make their own motherboards?

[Billly Gates]

I can not figure out how this makes good business sense?

Dell was correct back in 1999 to turn down the Athlon due to instability issues with some early chipsets.

But today the chipsets (excluding VIA) are fairly reliable. Does serverworks have a chipset for the Opteron?

Maybe that could be the reason?

But AMD chips are now reliable and alot cheaper and could save Dell a ton of money. Especially this is true in the server arena.

Re:Does Dell make their own motherboards?

[Hoser McMoose]

Dell does not make their own motherboards. In fact, Dell does not make anything at all, they assemble other companies components (and even that is often outsourced). Things like motherboards are contracted out to the lowest bidder. This is exactly the same way that HPaq builds their machines as well.

As for Serverworks/Broadcom (Serverworks was bought out a couple years ago), they do not yet have an AMD chipset out, but are working on one. In fact, since Intel decide to yank Serverworks license for the 800MT/s Xeon bus, they don't really have much choice except to make AMD chipsets. It's still a work-in-progress though. Pretty much all of the current Opteron servers use AMD's own 8000 series chipset.

But the price is where you're argument breaks down because you're forgetting that Dell does NOT buy through anything that even remotely resembles retail channels. AMD chips would NOT save Dell any money at all because there is no way in hell AMD could undercut the pricing that Dell gets from Intel by any meaningful amount.

It doesn't much matter if you're talking about desktops or servers, Dell does NOT pay much of anything for their processors (or any other component for that matter). The cost of PC systems, except at the VERY high-end (low volume) is almost entirely comprised of the cost to assemble and support those systems. Ohh, that and the Microsoft tax.

Is AMD capable of supplying enough chips?

[Lemming Mark]

Technical considerations aside, there are business reasons that could contribute to this decision. Aside from the issues of switching processor vendors, there's also the issue of production capacity.

Intel is a much larger company than AMD. I was under the impression that AMD doesn't (yet) have the production capacity to match Intel - could they actually manage to supply at the rate Dell might require? It's not in Dell's interests to go with a component it can't obtain in sufficient bulk, regardless of technical issues.

Re:Is AMD capable of supplying enough chips?

[ppanon]

For desktops? Almost certainly not. For servers? Absolutely. You can bet they'd switch their production lines to higher margin server chips if they had to. It would take three months for increased numbers of finished server chips to make it out the other end of the manufacturing pipeline but soemthing could be worked out in the meantime.

Re:Why would they switch to a cheaper chip?

[ltbarcly]

I think you mean highest profit OR lowest risk. Rarely in any financial situation will the highest profit be gained from taking the option with the least risk. In fact, the opposite is almost always the case. Of course, least risk doesn't even mean "lose the most money", it has to do with volatility also.

These things can be very complicated, this is *why* there are professional bean counters all over the place.

Re:You know....

[Nutria]

- Have anywhere near the manufacturing capabilites of Intel.


This just as important to Dell as anything else.

And this is why....

[tweek]

I didn't buy a dell the past christmas for my wife.

I went round and round trying to find a good vendor to provide an AMD64 machine for my wife to do her video and photo stuff on and I actually looked at Dell. I searched all over and found that they didn't sell a single AMD64 machine.

So I walked away.

I ended up spending around 3k for a machine with Monarch/NewEgg and did some of the assembly myself but my wife now has a computer that I won't have to upgrade for quite some time. That includes the 3 year warranty from Monarch.

I understand that Dell keeps costs inline by pulling an assembly line approach but this is going to bite them in the ass even more as people start demanding x86_64 and Dell can't come to market. EMT64 just doesn't cut it in my mind.

Hell even IBM is starting to introduce AMD64 in it's xSeries line.

Re:And this is why....

[heypete]

Three thousand dollar?!

I built a machine that approached the point-of-diminishing-returns (i.e. not the top-of-the-line CPU and graphics card, as they're way too expensive...but something just beneath them) with an ABIT motherboard, Athlon64 CPU, NVIDIA 6600GT graphics card, etc.

Total cost? $600.

Add about $200 for water-cooling.

Final price: $800 plus tax. It can run Half-Life 2 at 160 frames per second. Surely it's more than enough to do home video/photo work.

Re:And this is why....

[tweek]

Well mind you that this includes speakers, high-end video card, lcd monitor, raid 1 in hardware.

I built a machine that will be future proof for the foreseeable future. I wanted it to last as long as possible. I feel really good about the whole process.

Re:And this is why....

[ModMeFlamebait]

I ended up spending around 3k for a machine with Monarch/NewEgg and did some of the assembly myself but my wife now has a computer that I won't have to upgrade for quite some time. That includes the 3 year warranty from Monarch.

Man, for $3k I'd settle for nothing less than a server-grade machine (2-way, RAID and stuff). You got ripped off. Sibling post has a very important phrase - point of diminishing returns. I upgraded my machine (AMD64/3000+ BOX, 512MB, 450W PSU) for about $400 (while the USD exchange rate was hitting the rock bottom). Sure I could go for, say, 4000+ but what would be the point? It's not noticeable except for benchmarks and CPU-bound work and would increase the price about 2x or 3x. I don't plan to upgrade for the foreseeable future anyway.

Don't know what it looks like over the pond but a vendor offered me a desktop-grade machine for $3k, I'd laugh him to hell. A local vendor came to offer my father a box for $1500 (two nice mothly salaries here), they heard a hearty fsck you and we rolled our own (90% of the spec, unnoticeable under normal work conditions) for about $550. Warranty? Laughable, the service guys are morons anyway.

Granted, I do support and service a few Dell boxen but we only bought them because they were dirt cheap (bought on online auctions) and it's a PITA too (burnt PSU? broken motherboard? everything is non-fucking-standard).

Re:And this is why....

[tweek]

I don't know how well this will format but here it is. I admit now that I was way off the cost. I was actually including some components that I bought myself on the same order. I just went back and looked at the final invoice. I added up JUST her parts and it came out to around $1900.

Since you called bullshit, do I have to pick up the cards? hehe.

Monarch Computer

80232 Barebone AMD Athlon 64( 939 ) Pre-Tested and Setup System 1 $18.00 $18.00
100080 LIAN LI PC-V1000 ( BLACK ) ALUMINUM QUIET TOWER 1 $189.00 $189.00
100311 Antec True Power 480W Power Supply Gold Plated Connectors 1 $91.00 $91.00
110228 MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum Socket 939 for AMD® Athlon 64FX/64 processor Supports 3500+, 3800+ Athlon 64FX 53, or higher CPU 1 $139.00 $139.00
120421 AMD Athlon 64 3000 939 Pin ADA3000DIK4BI 1 $149.00 $149.00
130150 Thermaltake (A1772) AMD Opteron & Athlon 64 Heatsink and fan. AMD Recomended 1 $35.00 $35.00
800018 Thermal Grease, Shin-Etsu G675, apply combo(cools cpu better) 1 $14.00 $14.00
140803 CORSAIR TWINX1024-3200C2PT DDR 400 1GB (2 pcs 512) 1 $199.00 $199.00
800036 MB-CPU COMBO 3 Y WARRANTYw/30 DAY FRIEGHT RETURN PREPAID 1 $29.95 $29.95
230122 Logitech® Cordless MX Duo Cordless Enhanced Function Keys Mac Multimedia Control Optical PC PS/2 Scroll wheel USB Zero Degree Tilt 1 $59.00 $59.00
250234 Logitech X-530 5.1 Speaker with Subwoofer -RETAIL 970114-0403 1 $58.00 $58.00
160941 SAMSUNG DVD+-RW 16x DUAL LAYER BULK Black TS-H552B/WBCH WITH SOFTWARE 1 $74.00 $74.00
170108 MITSUMI FLOPPY,7 in 1, BLACK ,CARD,READER 1 $49.00 $49.00

NewEgg

22-145-072 HD 160GB|HITC SATA 8MB 14R9463 % 2 $93.06 $186.12
14-150-080 VGA XFX|GF 6600 GT 128MB PVT43AND 1 $240.50 $240.50

Techdepot

SAMSUNG 17'' 710N-Black LCD Monitor 1 $329.99 *

Re:And this is why....

[tweek]

Shit I just realized you were talking about the guy who answered me. My bad. But it did make me go back and look to see how much I spent.

Re:And this is why....

[tweek]

See the following comment. I was way off base. I was including everything I purchased on that order and not just the parts for her machine. I bought one of those samsung monitors for myself as well.

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140748&ci d= 11797633

Re:And this is why....

[heypete]

NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT 128MB - $219
ABIT KV8-Pro Motherboard - $89
Maxtor 160GB HD - $91.95
AMD Athlon64 3200+ 2.2Ghz - $180
512MB Corsair RAM - $69.05

Subtotal: $649

Add $40.55 shipping and $50.75 tax for a total of $740.30.

I put all the stuff into an old case with a 350W power supply I had lying around. Worked just fine, but ran a bit hot. Generic cases are cheap, and run about $20 on NewEgg. Total price for an air-cooled system: $760.30, with adjusted amounts for shipping and tax.

Add a Koolance PC2-601BLW case ($180) and a waterblock for my CPU and graphics card ($50 each) for a complete cost of $1,020.30.

I evidently underestimated the cost of the system, I stand corrected. Still, I was only about $200 off. Not bad.

This might not be *just* beneath the top-of-the-line, but it's right at the point of diminishing returns where it's simply not economical to spend more for minor performance increases.

I already had a KVM switch and cables, so I was able to use this new computer with my existing monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Monsoon sound system. If one were building a brand-new system, one would obviously need to buy these things for an additional cost.

Re:Please explain "better product".

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

In other news..

[khrtt]

I reject Dell...again!

In other words, Dell is a large company, and they can have a million corporate reasons not to use AMD chips - reasons that don't apply to me and you. Like, they can't source them fast enough, or they sell to stupid asshats who don't know about AMD, or AMD's president's third nephew screwed Dell's cousin's cousin's daughter. Why the heck do I care, unless they state their reasons? Also, I don't buy Dell computers because they are too expensive for what they are. I can get equivalent machines for less - quality, speed, support and all - from other vendors. If Dell is not competitive (for me as a customer, anyways) why should I care that they don't buy AMD CPUs?

AMD should...

[zarthrag]

...make anti-Dell remarks in public - and refuse to ever offer them a bargain. Then maybe Dell will stop trying to whore wintel for money.

Re:AMD should...

[bluGill]

How much market share does Dell have? AMD doesn't need Dell. They would like to have Dell, but they don't need Dell. HP/Compaq, is only slightly back, while IBM, Gateway, and the like still account for something. However that isn't the full story either, adding the market share of everyone with more than 5% of the market you come up short of 50%, meaning the little guy (who is a tech and should of heard of AMD) accounts for more total than the big names.

No, AMD, does not need Dell. AMD needs the motherboard and chipset vendors, but they seem to have enough of them.

Reference for those who want numbers

Re:AMD should...

[legirons]

From the article, it sounds like AMD stand to gain a lot from Microsoft allowing their dual-core chips to run using a "single-processor" Windows license, reducing the apparent software cost for AMD users.

Dell of course, are famous for selling lots of copies of Windows, even to the extent that it costs more to buy linux from them than it does Windows (if you can even find a computer they'll supply it with)

So Microsoft can effectively control the apparent price of AMD machines, just like they prevented people from buying 64-bit AMD CPUs by delaying a version of Windows which supported it, even as people were waiting to buy the 64-way CPUs for use with non-Windows systems. So does AMD not argue with Dell for fear of annoying Microsoft?

Re:AMD should...

[marcosdumay]

And why would AMD make Dell give more money to Intel?

Re:Please explain "better product".

[wfberg]

Explain, in technical terms, just how one processor is "better" than another. I do not accept annecdotal evidence. This explanation must also accompany a long term projection of cost savings over the life of the product. There should also be a justification for switch factor that states, in car terms, if the speed limit for most consumers is 55-65 mph, just why it is important to drive a Ferrari on the standard business highway.

I fully agree. I don't understand why Dell moved away from the 286, those were just as good as any other processor.

Re:Temperature Liability?

[raitchison]

I think this is no small part of Dell's decision to stick with Intel.

In the past when AMD's chips were merely "knock-off's" of Intels they had a lot of relibility problems, mostly related their their heat generation.

IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were). These contradictary requirements resulted in bass-ackwards chip designs that were inefficient. This then caused AMD to push the envelope of what the chips could handle clock speed wise. With the final result being chips with a much higher failure rate (several hundred times higher in my professional career).

I remember back in 98 or 99 (yes I know ancient history) one coustomer of mine had several thousand HP Vectra PCs, all with Intel chips. They decided to buy a batch of AMD equipped Vectras as each PC was about $30 cheaper with an AMD over an Intel CPU. Out of the 80 or so AMD equipped HP Vectras 11 of them were DOA and another 4 had their processors go out in less than a month. I know that experience left an extremely strong impression in the customers mind and mine as well.

Now things are definitely different, AMD is doing it's own thing (rather than just copying Intel's chips), doing it extremely well and using their technology and performance as selling points (not just a Still I can see how someone who has been burned (pun intended) by AMD in the past, even the very distant past would be reluctant to try it again. With Intel you know that you are paying too much but you also know nothing is going to go wrong.

From Dell's position, it's hard to screw up sticking with Intel as long as the number$ add up.

A "shift" to AMD?

[localman]

Is that as difficult a shift as using a Western Digial hard drive instead of a Quantum?

My company made this amazing AMD "shift" several months ago and I don't think anyone at all noticed. What is so tough about this?

Cheers.

here's another good reason..

[TheHawke]

Just got done tangling with a Dell system that got it's onboard VGA plug ripped out (idiot customer didnt unscrew the thumbscrews before he yanked).
I got a wild idea about putting a MSI board into the case, only to discover that the mounting holes on the backplane do NOT match up with the HSF holes for the mounting bracket.
I sat back, cussed and stewed over this, only to come to a conclusion that Intel and Dell did a backroom agreement that they would alter the design for the HSF mounting points to keep any customer from doing a swapout of the mainboard without doing some major surgery. Fortunately I went and got a HSF from a local supplier and pretty much bypassed most of the BS that is inside a dell case.
This looks like that it was no accident, the backplane is 2 centimeters to the right of the holes on the MSI board. If you think that i'm full of it, there are TWO sets of HSF mounting holes on the backplane that are pretty much set up for certain intel boards. None of the P4 boards I have will match up with them.

Re:here's another good reason..

[wheelgun]

Proprietary components seem to be the norm in factory built desktops these days. It inspired me to learn about building my own PC. I replaced my Dell Dimension XPS-T with a homebuilt and haven't looked back.

I don't mind the use of proprietary parts. They're OK for "Grandma's Email Machine". But they can make things hard for a 1st time component upgrader who just wants a better video card or whatnot.

Re:here's another good reason..

[TheHawke]

Also considering that "value" intel boards do NOT have a AGP slot soldered on them.

grrrr...

Re:here's another good reason..

[toddestan]

If you do manage to get another board in there, be sure to check the pinout on the power supply before trying to turn it on, unless you want another surprise!

Your best bet would be to get a whitebox case, decent power supply, new motherboard, and move the rest of the parts over.

Re:here's another good reason..

[TheHawke]

Naw, they would not go as far as modifying the power output without putting some sort of major notice on the system.
I believe that Micron tried something like that once, departing from the AT standard at the time. They caught hell for it and were forced to switch back to the old standard.

Same went for Packard Hell (Bell) and their little powerpacks.. $100+ US for a power supply? Forget it.

Re:here's another good reason..

[toddestan]

Naw, they would not go as far as modifying the power output without putting some sort of major notice on the system.

You're being sarcastic, right?

Click.

Re:here's another good reason..

[ImpTech]

Um, hrm... Dell's been putting out nothing but nonstandard power supplies since at least the Pentium 3 days AFAIK. I've plugged em into standard boards by mistake before. Never burned one, but I'd be careful.

Re:here's another good reason..

[hugesmile]

(idiot customer didnt unscrew the thumbscrews before he yanked).

I consider that an oxymoron. If he is a customer of mine, then he is no idiot. However, if he fails to pay his bill, then he may be an idiot, but then he's not a customer.

Is it really Dell's trick?

[spideyct]

Dell has been credited with pioneering some great business practices, but I think it is a stretch to credit them with "play competitors off of each other for your benefit".

Are you trying to imply there is something negative about this sound business practice?

Re:This is news?

[Pierre]

I think this is more and more true. The last batch of PC's that we recieved from Dell were plagued with little hardware nusances. Dell is becoming Gateway...

Re:Please explain "better product".

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nobody gives a shit that it runs at a lower clockspeed.
yep, because that means at the same clockspeed, it goes 'faster'

> Nobody gives a shit that it uses very slightly less power.
you would if you were paying the power bill for 200+ machines running them

>And the fact it runs in 64-bit mode is totally fucking irrelevant if you're running Windows (like just about all of Dell's customers).
And if you aren't running windows?

think before you type

Re:Temperature Liability?

[mako1138]

Now that Intel has the hotter chips, this point is largely moot.

Re:this whole thing reaks...

[northcat]

Captain Obvious says: Yes.

That's notwhat I'm seeing

[TWX]

"...Mr Dell is deep in Intel's pocket, and wont be cooperating with AMD any time soon."

Dell comes out and announces this to keep Intel on its toes and to drive up interest in the company. It's like how Apple maintains an x86 port of the Darwin Kernel that OSX uses; not because they intend to switch to x86, but because it gives them, "see, we don't need to run on Motorola/IBM Power architecture, so if you want us to you'd better give us more of what we want," lattitude with an actual possible way to back it up.

Dell probably had some negotiations that were not going as well as they had hoped, so they made this announcement. Behind the scenes things got addressed, and now they've retracted it.

Re:That's notwhat I'm seeing

[SA Stevens]

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.

Re:That's notwhat I'm seeing

[TWX]

When they developed the port, IBM wasn't making the whizzbang processors, Motorola was. IBM was making the 603 line, and then when they were making G3s, Motorola was making higher end chips. I know that IBM took the lead at some point, but everything that I've read had indicated that Motorola is manufacturing the new G5 chips, so I don't really know who's doing what at this point.

Re:That's notwhat I'm seeing

[TWX]

Openstep wasn't an Apple-only project, and the bulk of the NeXT-manufactured machines used Motorola processors. the Openstep/486 was an expensive and small distribution OS, and was a spinoff of the Motorola variant. So, when the Darwin kernel was developed, it had to then be ported to the x86 architecture. This probably wasn't as hard as if they had no experience porting NeXTStep, but it still required work that they could have *easily* not bothered with.

Did you ever actually play with that kernel? I did, and I can tell you that it required Intel chipsets for everything, including the main motherboard chipset (440BX, LX, and a P-Pro variant if memory serves), video, and ethernet. This may have been coincidental, but picking that particular vendor for everything seems like it was intentional.

Re:Temperature Liability?

[rpozz]

From my experience, the Athlon XP and P4 Prescott or above both run bloody hot. The Athlon 64 runs damn cool, and the P4 Northwood is nearly as good.

Re:Why would they switch to a cheaper chip?

[Samari711]

Well it's not always the case that profit is an inverse function of risk. The ideal situation though is one with no risk and tons and tons of profit. Dell obviously has a fairly low threshold of acceptable risk, otherwise they'd probably either be switching vendors to AMD or would be offering both depending on which deal would be sweeter.

Dell Sucks Ass

[OblivionExpress]

...well I already said so...

Errr...

[The Fanta Menace]

That is now beginning to put customers more at ease that they don't need to make a shift (to AMD)

Just how hard is it to move to a chip that does essentially the same thing as Intel? Even from a systems administration perspective, this is a non-issue.

Re:Errr...

[argent]

I thought that was a weird comment, too. It's double-odd, when you think about it:

1. Unless you need 64-bit mode (which usually you don't), the Opteron is basically a faster Pentium clone, no?

2. Giving customers an option doesn't force them to switch.

Same old crowd...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

AMD doesnt need Dell

[mnmn]

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

Re:AMD doesnt need Dell

[endx7]

Anyone looking for performance gets an Athlon64 server.

No, no, no. Anyone looking for performance gets an Opteron server.

The Athlon64 is more orientated towards the desktop portion, not server.

AMD can't produce chips in high enough volume.

[Kaldaien]

This has been explained many times in the past. It's true that DELL and Gateway once offered AMD based machines. And one of the reasons they stopped is because AMD could not meet demand.

Make a shift to AMD ?!?

[Namlak]

That's like pondering a shift to a different brand of gasoline for your car; you don't plan a migration, it's a compatible product and just works upon use.

Sure, it's a platform (chipsets, etc) change but if you're running the IT of a corporation and change platforms, you're buying a lot of *something* and buying a lot of AMD is no different than buying a lot of Intel.

What a surprise!

[MerlinTheWizard]

Dell has been Intel's kiss ass for decades. Can you begin to imagine how their commercial relationship would be rotting if they switched to AMD for *some* of their products? All technical matters aside, seriously: how could they do that? If they did, I'm sure someone would even be fearing for his own life...

I won't buy another Dell laptop again until...

[USCG]

While I can appreciate what AMD has done to the CPU market, that's not my primary concern. I'm more interested in GPU over a CPU at present. I won't buy another Dell laptop (I currently have an Inspiron 8200) until Dell starts offering a more current nVidia product line-all they do is sport ATI for most of the current Inspiron systems. I do know that their mobile precision workstation uses a 256 MByte nVidia solution, but I'd rather have a GeForce 6 Go. If Dell doesn't start supporting nVidia by the time the GeForce 7 comes out, I'll be in the market for a new laptop, but I won't buy a Dell if this pattern doesn't change in the next 12-18 months...

Equivalent to Dell selling AMD?

[BobKagy]

My brother started telling his friends and family to buy Dell a few years ago when he decided he didn't want to be everyone's tech support guy.

The last time I had a Dell, I was quite impressed with their support. When the CD-ROM died, they sent someone to my house to pop in a replacement.

Now I think I may be looking for a new PC. And AMD's 64 bit chips look impressive. Is there anyone out there with a reputation for support and reasonable prices like Dell, that sells AMD's chips?

Re:Equivalent to Dell selling AMD?

[Shadow99_1]

Sure, how many do you want me to list? Since Dell's suport really isn't special at all unless your a corporate account... Though you must live awfully close to some sort of Dell facility for them to send someone out to you... I've worked Tech support before and even before they started sending tech support overseas to lower costs you'd be hard pressed to see that happen...

Re:Equivalent to Dell selling AMD?

[BobKagy]

I believe at the time their systems came with 1 year of free on site support. If their phone tech support determined there was a hardware problem, they'd send someone out to do the work.

It appears this option is still available as "At-Home Service".

Not sure what their support is currently like. They sent a guy to my house to replace my CD-ROM back in 1996 without asking too many questions.

Tech: What's the problem?
Me: The CD tray stops half way when I press the close button.
Tech: Ok. We'll send out a tech to replace it. Will you be available Tuesday from 1-3pm?
I think the conversation was a little longer, but it didn't take multiple calls or many hoops.

AMD lists several places to buy AMD64 systems, many of which offer the same optional on-site repair contract. Not sure who lives up to their claims, but for that I'll have to read the reviews as it sounds like few actually do these days.

Re:Equivalent to Dell selling AMD?

[kabz]

My Compaq Presario is a decent enough home machine with an AMD Athlon Processor that, clocked at 2.16GHz is a fair bit faster, subjectively than a friends Dell with a 2 GHz Pentium 4.

Personally I won't buy Dells anymore as I like the AMD stuff. I just hit Fry's today for a Asus 754 MBoard, Athlon 64 3000, generic Nvidia 5200, 30 Gig Raptor, 512MB OCZ premium, total cost aboput $500. It's pretty easy to put a new system together, so why bother with Dell or Compaq ?

Probably just a ploy.....

[oritpro]

to get better pricing out of Intel. False advertising, lousy customer service & subpar components included with every system. I wouldn't buy a Dell if they started using Cell chips. Anymore, I refer people looking to upgrade to apple.com.

Nothing like an unbiased news source...

[Hack Jandy]

Do people still read The Register? I had always thought of them as some kind of British tabloid magazine, and ever since they lost BOFH, things got progressively worse. Need we just look to some of their most recent articles (from the front page even!)?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/25/breast_sha pe/

WTF? Am I reading Cosmo or an IT website? Sure fooled me!

Re:Apparently, changing chip vendors is too much w

[ppanon]

maybe dell has used amd to leverage a better deal from intel. we've seen the same thing happen with linux/open source and microsoft. organisations announce they are considering the former until microsoft jumps in with massive price reductions.

The funny thing is that while that type of predatory-pricing anti-competitive behaviour would significantly hurt any other type of competition, it hurts Microsoft a lot more than it hurts Suse, Redhat, and other Linux vendors. Linux development will continue regardless, but by caving in with lowball bids, Microsoft is letting everyone else know that it's possible to get those deals if you can put up a believable bluff. It's hurting MS' future earnings and ability to pursue further R&D (aka aquisitions of promising ISVs). MS is in a war of attrition that they, while having a great headstart, are still bound to lose because, outside of Western Europe and N.A., switching to Linux isn't a bluff, it's an economic necessity.

AMD vs. Everything Else

[empirionx3]

I've only recently had the opportunity to use an AMD based computer, and thought that it was great. I love the 64 bit, and that has led me to looking for a laptop based on their 64b processor. The problem is that no one has any. I've found about 5 companies that sell them, which leads me to wonder... I read on /. all the time about AMD vs. Intel, but in the real world, there simply doesn't seem to be any real competition, with the exception of gamers/hardware "nerds". (of which I am one)

Is AMD really making a dent in the Intel market, or am I just missing a major shift in the market?

Re:AMD vs. Everything Else

[Shadow99_1]

It depends on which market... Desktops have been up to 50% AMD in the last few years, though exact numbers change all the time and they only track retail store sales figures... Laptops has been to nearly 40% AMD in the same span at certain points...

HP/Compaq make AMD64 laptops.
Gateway/Emachines make AMD64 laptops (though unfrotunately their new models aren't up to the great early emachines A64 laptops).

Those are mainstream examples, but custom places do to like:

VoodooPC

The problem is the asian laptop makers who create those laptops that Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc remark as their own... Not many use AMD chips, and those that do only make models for a few vendors... But even so, most of those are enough to keep AMD in that market with some style...

I want my AMD

[ShnowDoggie]

Well that does it. My next desktop is not going to be Dell. Of course I built my last desktop, and I will most likely build the next. So what do I matter to Dell?

The corporate world still wants Intel chips in their servers. The home users often do not know jack about what is in a computer. I think Dell will be OK. I regret the decision though.

Correction

[USCG]

I just saw this...so apparently Dell will finally use a Linux-compatible 3D solution. However, I'll wait one more cycle because the CPU is potentially the bottleneck with UT2004. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2356 &p=2

Re:Please explain "better product".

[Ulric]

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.

Geek Pissing-Contests.

[Shturmovik]

I've stopped talking to friends about computer-related issues, and have actually stopped talking to some completely because all they ever want to do is engage in these fucking idiotic competitions.

Here's a typical IM chat transcript:

Friend: what r u doing?

Me: Installing a new video card for somebody

Friend: what card did you get?

Me: The XXXX-XX

Friend: good luck! those are shit!

Me: It seems okay. These guys only do basic stuff anyway

Friend: pffft! sucker! Those are garbage! I got a XX-XXXX! WAAAAY better!

Me: Whatever

Friend: how much did u pay? i hope it wasn't more than $XXX!!!!

Me: $XXX

Friend: LOL!!! dude they saw u coming! u wont even get XX fps from that! the drivers are the WORST eva!!! u should have asked me!

Me: Uhuh

Friend: I had one of those cards AGES ago and it stunk. i gave it to somebody and got the XX-XXXX instead. way way better. the pixellatingvertexantialiasingtrilinearnucleardefib rillator is the best around. that card u got is a dog!!! man when r u going to learn tha-

Me has signed out...

Why Dell works for me

[Glendale2x]

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.

Not about Dell switching completely to AMD

[xswl0931]

It is true that AMD doesn't have the production capabilities to supply enough chips if Dell decided to completely drop Intel and use AMD. However, such an idea is as stupid as it is crazy. Dell doesn't even have a single model that uses AMD chips. If Dell decided to use AMD, they would most likely start with a single model to see how well it sells and AMD should have the capacity to handle that.

Re:Not about Dell switching completely to AMD

[Lemming Mark]

I think it'll be a _very_ long time before it's sensible for Dell to drop Intel.

However, I'm not sure selling a single AMD model would make good business sense - they'd at least want to offer _some_ choice.

Re:Temperature Liability?

[toddestan]

I remember back in 98 or 99 (yes I know ancient history) one coustomer of mine had several thousand HP Vectra PCs, all with Intel chips. They decided to buy a batch of AMD equipped Vectras as each PC was about $30 cheaper with an AMD over an Intel CPU. Out of the 80 or so AMD equipped HP Vectras 11 of them were DOA and another 4 had their processors go out in less than a month. I know that experience left an extremely strong impression in the customers mind and mine as well.

Funny, I have NEVER seen an HP Vectra equiped with anything but an Intel chip.

Are you sure they didn't get Pavilions or Compaqs, or something else?

Re:Temperature Liability?

[rwyoder]

With Intel you know that you are paying too much but you also know nothing is going to go wrong.

So the FDIV bug never happened?

Cringely, not Dvorak

[SendBot]

Look at what Dvorak says in his latest column

I know it's probably not what you meant, but that should read Cringely's latest column.

Re:Cringely, not Dvorak

[bdsesq]

Opps. Thanks

Re:Temperature Liability?

[LurkerXXX]

With Intel you know that you are paying too much but you also know nothing is going to go wrong.

Nothing wrong by going with Intel? You mean like getting back bad data from floating point calculations, but Intel telling you that they were 'close enough' isn't wrong. (For you young-in's, Intel had a chip with a bad floating point unit. Rather than recall the bad chips, they told the customers that they were 'good enough' and that they didn't really need correct floating point answers.) Intel's record isn't perfect by any stretch.

Re:AMD stability history has something to do with

[toddestan]

I have seen quite a bit of flakyness with boards using AMD's own chipset for the XP and MP chips. Granted, AMD didn't make the boards, but these came from different manufacturers. I don't know if AMD could bring to the market a board for their chips that would be as solid as Intel's boards for Intel chips.

Surprisenly, I have not had much trouble with VIA based boards, unless you put high bandwidth devices on the PCI bus, in which case you're screwed.

Otherwise, that leaves Nvidia and SIS as chipset makers that I don't have much experience with. I guess my next board will probably be a NForce of some kind.

Re:It's not about quality

[Billly Gates]

Those statistics he cited I saw back in 2000 from some Intel promotional video.

I believe today its more around 25% AMD adn 75% intel.

Also I think IBM fabs some of the athlons but I am not to sure on this. They could have the production available if IBM loanded them the fabrication plants.

Re:Why would they switch to a cheaper chip?

[Hoser McMoose]

One big thing that people forget in this whole deal is that AMD chips are NOT cheaper for Dell.

Dell does NOT pay anything remotely close to what you or I would pay for a P4. Where we might have to spend $200 for a 3.2GHz chip, Dell can get that same chip for ~$50.

it's more of a business concern

[john_uy]

i don't think amd will be able to supply dell with the quantity it requires even if dell would like to. also, a shortage, production problems no matter how small will immediately translate to loss for dell and their shares going down. i think that is the reason why dell is not yet choosing amd. but if amd will increase its fab capacity, then maybe dell can rethink of getting amd.

let's take a scenario where dell will order 1 million chips from amd. dell would want it right here right now. if you can't provide it, sorry. and what would that amount (%) to the total amount of their sales?

i think on the other hand, if dell would source its chips from amd, amd will have to stop selling chips to other oems and retail channel due to shortage of chips. the average price per chip will be reduced and will not spell great profit for amd.

:) john

Re:It's not about quality

[Shadow99_1]

Wow amazingly those numbers are so wrong it's funny... and people think you are being insightful... Geez...

This has nothing to do with capacity, AMD already makes 1 quarter to 1 third of all x86 compatable cpus... From one plant. One plant I might add that doens't even need to work every day of every month to do that (since they didn't need as many cpu's as they were making they now periodically turn off the cpu equivalent of an assembly line)...

This is all about Intel payouts and deals the cut Dell... Nothing more.

Re:Temperature Liability?

[Hoser McMoose]

Not only do newer AMD chips run cooler than previous generations, but they run cooler than all current Intel chips (except the Pentium-M) as well.

However, beyond that, I'd say that it's totally a moot point. ALL systems with current processors WILL fail if the CPU fan dies. It doesn't make one lick of difference if it's an Intel or AMD processor there, the system will *DEFINITELY* lock up in a very short period of time.

AMD and Intel chips also respond in almost the exact same way in this regard, and neither of them will require a CPU or motherboard replacement except in VERY rare situations, mainly involving rather catastrophic cooling failures, ie you're whole heatsink gets ripped off the motherboard. Given that both AMD and Intel now bolt their heatsinks onto the motherboard fairly firmly, this is really a non-issue.

So, long story short, no, this is in no way related to Dells decision. There are MANY other reasons why Dell might chose not to use AMD chips, but few if any are due to any sort of technical advantage or difficency one way or the other.

Re:It's not about quality

[Hoser McMoose]

Uhhh... just which orafice are you pulling those numbers from? They are totally wrong! According to the most recent numbers from IDC, Intel makes 82.2% of x86 chips, AMD makes 16.6% and VIA and Transmeta combined for about 1%.

Wave the AMD flag to get better prices

[fluor2]

- Intel has becomed a supplier. Thus Dell get special prices
- When buyers of big amounts complain about AMD price, Intel always bend and give Dell a better price (we've experienced this atleast once as a buyer).

Re:Please explain "better product".

[Gandulfy]

Nobody gives a shit that it runs at a lower clockspeed.
They don't? Intel charges an assload of money for a p4-E 3.8G care to explain how a 3000+ amd I have in my room (base clock speed of 1.8 ghz) can run at almost the same equivilant as the p4 not to mention can be overclocked to 2.5 ghz making it outperform the p4 on stock cooling?

Nobody gives a shit that it uses very slightly less power.
I seriously beg to differ here especially if you are running more then one, not to mention less power = less heat.

And the fact it runs in 64-bit mode is totally fucking irrelevant if you're running Windows (like just about all of Dell's customers).
Windows 64 comes out in april officially, and what about people who do not wish to run windows?

And as for the rest your stupid to buy a prebuilt pc anyways ;) so who cares hehe

Re:Temperature Liability?

[ImpTech]

> IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were).

That doesn't really make sense. Architecturally Intel and AMD are and always have been almost identical in that they're both x86. As far as how they actually implement that architecture, its pretty impossible for two separate entities to create the same chip unless they use the exact same plans, which in the case of Intel and AMD would imply that someone stole secret documents from the other. You can't really create a "knockoff" microprocessor the way other products are knocked-off, ie. by reverse engineering. Or rather, you could, but its probably easier to design your own.

IMO what happened is AMD simply got better at designing high performance microprocessors. Maybe they hired some smart people, or maybe its because of their increasing level of partnership with IBM, or maybe they just learned from their mistakes. Of course Intel's colossally bad design for the Pentium 4 probably helped too.

sceptical

[SilverspurG]

skeptical

Intel vs AMD

[scottp]

Ya know this is a very old battle and I don't think there is one winner, you have your intel fans and your amd fans. I want stable. I have never seen anything more stable than an intel cpu on an intel board. i have an amd 64bit processor now on an asus MB running windows xp media center serving as my personal video recorder, it has to be booted every 3 days or hard crashes/lockups will ensue. I set my p4 2.4 to do the same thing, it has yet to lockup after 6 months. I have used athlons with linux, one atlon cpu died after 6 months, tried duron with linux (won that cpu and mb) died after 8 months. If AMD made their own chipset things might be different and no, owning VIA doesn't count cause their (via's) hipsets have always have been buggy/lockups/crashes in every instance I've tried them. I give AMD a chance about every 6-8 months and since 98/99 (and before) when I was selling K62-400MHz and since then, they have always lost to Intel's stability and reliability. I have seen one dead Pentium III or IV in the past 4+ years that wasn't due to a surge, lightning damage, or user tampering (out of 1000's of machines), however, I have a shelf full of Duron, K62's, & Athlons that are dead as doorknobs.

Re:Intel vs AMD

[BCW2]

I work in a white box store and we sell AMD 12 to 1 over Intel. AMD, in my experience, has about the same failure rate as Intel, small, very small. There have been issues with Via chipsets, but few with Nforce. Some boards a quirky/pickey about memory, don't try to run cheap stuff on a Gigabyte, stick with Corsair or Kingston. Thats the biggest issue I've seen.

I have an Asus A7N8X board that has run for the last 2 years with an Athlon XP 2000+ in it. I changed it 3 weeks ago to an XP 3000+. No problems of any kind. Running Win XP on one drive(60GB Maxtor fluid bearing) and RH9 on the other(40GB Maxtor fluid bearing) ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, 512MB Ram.

Re:Intel vs AMD

[BenjyD]

VIA do seem to have had a lot of problems with reliability in the past. My last graphics card (Radeon 9200) had huge trouble with my KT-133A, and USB support has always been a bit flaky.
I very much doubt it's the processor causing the problem, though. A properly installed AMD processor is just as reliable as an Intel one.

My K6-233 from 1996 is still going fine, despite being used constantly in three servers and two desktops since then, and weathering a Slashdotting recently (something like 20,000 visitors in a day, IIRC).

Re:Please explain "better product".

[Anarke_Incarnate]

The 64bit portions of intel's CPUs are a kludge compared to AMD's. While they maintain almost perfect compatibility with the spec as per AMD's definition, intel CPUs cannot address >4GB RAM the same way. They use pointers to address this. Read Redhat's documentation on how they futzed with the kernel for intel's "64bit" CPUs so they could handle >4GB w/o all kinds of problems. Intel's CPUs run hotter (and while you think this does not matter, it causes issues for the life of components as well as the user ending up with slower and possibly less stable hardware. Dust can cause severe problems for heat and in turn cause the CPU to throttle back and lower speed. Way to go overpriced CPU) AMD's offerings in that area are superior. The only things intel has in its favor is marketing and 3d party vendor support. The new Nvidia Nforce4 Pro chipsets make AMD's Opteron line only more attractive.

ps

[yem]

Just to be clear, when I say "He", I mean the parent poster.

Not that it matters

[Trogre]

I regularly buy PC-based computers in large numbers and I have never bought a Dell. Never. Not once. Not even a little one. And only very occasionally have I bought Intel.

This decision is not going to affect me or many other PC users one bit.

Re:Please explain "better product".

[jr87]

just a little piece of info if you don't want to wait...the amd dual core chips are going to be socket 939...(sound familiar perhaps?) it's what the opterons use now :-D

Re:Please explain "better product".

[screwdriver]

True, except for the fact that these computers are designed to be servers! Maybe your parents have never heard of AMD/Linux, but I bet any decent sysadmin has. As hard as it may be to believe, your parents/friends are not Dell's only customers.

Dell's typical wishiwashiness...

[rnturn]

They support AMD, they don't support AMD, they support ...

Rather like their support for Linux. On again, off again, on again, off again... Hemming and hawing seems to be an integral part of the Dell corporate culture, doesn't it?

oblivious

[i'm not cool]

I would say that the majority of Dell customers don't even know what kind of computer they have besides being "A Dell", (if they even know that) let alone a model or processor (what's that???). I doubt that Dell would really care that the small percentage of people who build their own computers anyway don't want an intel chip. Personally, I have used AMDs for years (K6-2 400, a couple Athlons, and some earlier ones) even when other people said they were crap. Never had a problem with a processor. I remember being an OEM and Intel shut down their support board because people were having so many problems with their chipsets, and they didn't want it posted publicly.

Re:sceptical

[JakeD409]

"sceptical" and "skeptical" are both correct; "sceptical" is a variant of "skeptical" according to dictionary.com

Re:Consumers Reject Dell...

[ebrandsberg]

So the same program can be twice as large? The biggest benefit for the 64 bit code isn't 64 bits for most people, it's that the chip has more registers. With 64 bits, you will have as much memory access as you will ever need (tm), at least in the next 5 years, so 128 bit would be overkill, and force higher memory speeds for the same results. Nah, stick with 64 bits for now.

Go with SUN

[mousse-man]

I recently had the honor to find out what to buy next for a customer whose ERP system got too small hardware-wise. The customer is usually quite brand-loyal to Dell, and for their record, we had little trouble with the Dell machines apart from a dead PSU or so.

I basically had a few options since we need 64bit architecture withhin forseeable future.

- another Dell server. They have some nice offerings in the 64bit area
- choose another brand.

Basically, since I abhor the idea of going with Windows again, this was the options I had.

Currently, I'm toying with the idea to buy a SunFire v40z server as they're not too expensive (16 GB RAM, 4 Opteron 852 CPUs are something like 34000 Euros) compared to Dell's offerings which cost me at least 2000 Euros more, and run on Itanium CPUs whose future is spotty compared to the Opteron.

And as long as it runs SAP fast, users won't complain. And to boot, the SUN boxes look cute.

Re:Go with SUN

[tweek]

Why not go pSeries. You can get a nice 2 way p5 for around $4k US. It won't run Windows but I don't think you'll have an issue with SAP on it. It can run AIX or Linux. IBM *tells* me that a p4 is about the same as 2.5 Xeons. Those numbers don't really mean much to me but the fact that it's 64bit does. And I have a few choices of OS's and LPARs to boot.

Re:Please explain "better product".

[Anarke_Incarnate]

The Opterons use 940. The Athlon64 FX (and later Athlon 64s) use 939. This is due to the trimming of one HPT lane, supposedly.

Re:Please explain "better product".

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Joe Consumer will find this out. They may not know the nuts and bolts of what is going on, but when a tech explains to them that when their computer gets hot, it has to slow down to cool off, they will wonder about it. When that same tech (hopefully) tells them that other chips don't need this as much, he will feel cheated. It may not happen overnight, but it will happen.

Re:Apparently, changing chip vendors is too much w

[Cheese Grits]

This guy doesn't understand antitrust, and his opinion should not be regarded. Predatory pricing rules prevent sellers from selling below some measure of cost. The objective of the rules is to prevent large corporations from purposefully accepting short term losses on some product line in order to run a smaller competitor out of the market. If predatory pricing ever worked (which is almost assuredly doesn't), the goal for the predator is to secure enough monopoly power to be able to reduce output and increase prices to a level that allows the monopolist to recoup its prior losses plus any opportunity costs associated with the losses plus some additional monopoly profit. Prices, however, must not be raised to a level that entices new competition into the market. This is almost impossible to do, and most of the economics scholars agree that the practical impossability indicates that there is no anticompetitive effect from so called "predatory pricing". Regardless, rules against predatory pricing do not prevent consumers from bargaining prices downward. Antitrust rules exist to protect consumers; they generally do not exist to punish consumers for buying a prices they find favorable.

Re:Temperature Liability?

[LurkerXXX]

You mean the user base that included scientists. Yes, I understand, and was one of them. Moron anonymous coward.

finally someone whe gets it!

[jmpvm]

You hit the nail on the head.

There are way more considerations for a company like Dell than just performance and AMD being able to meet the volume demands of Dell is a serious concern.

I look at this as both a way for Dell to give Intel the hint that they are not completely entrenched in their tehcnology, as well as also looking into improving their product line. I'd bet the numbers just didn't hash out.

How about the OED?

[drewness]

sceptical, skeptical, a.
a. Of persons: Inclined to or imbued with scepticism (in the various senses of that word); in modern use often, dubious or incredulous. b. Of doctrines, opinions, etc.: Characteristic of a sceptic; of the nature of scepticism.

1639 FULLER Holy War IV. v. (1640) 176 Desiring rather to be scepticall then definitive in the causes of Gods judgements. 1660 PEPYS Diary 15 May, My Lord and I walked together..talking together upon..religion, wherein he is, I perceive, wholly sceptical, saying, that indeed the Protestants as to the Church of Rome are wholly fanatiques. 1736 BUTLER Anal. I. ii. 42 There is no Sort of Ground for being thus presumptuous, even upon the most sceptical Principles. 1788 BURKE Sp. agst. W. Hastings Wks. 1821 VII. 82 There were at that time, it seems, in Calcutta a wicked sceptical set of people, who somehow or other believed, that human agency was concerned in this elective [? read electric] flash, which came so very opportunely. 1840 WHEWELL Philos. Induct. Sci. (1847) II. 465 The Catastrophist's dogmatism is undermined by the Uniformitarian's skeptical hypotheses. 1870 BALDW. BROWN Eccl. Truth 231 There is a sense in which every age is..bound to be sceptical. 1884 RYLE Princ. Churchmen (ed. 2) 435 Many a sceptical saying is nothing more than a borrowed article, picked up and retailed by him who says it, because it seems clever. 1885 PATER Marius I. 157 He continued the sceptical argument he had commenced.

Re:In other news..

[khrtt]

The last laptop with similar specs that I got was a T series ThinkPad, ordered directly from IBM. But it was ...Pentium M (or roughly similar AMD)..., do you realize that there is really no AMD processor similar to the Pentium M in performance/power consumption? AMD just doesn't make any CPUs comparable to PM. Their desktop 939pin 90nm cores kick P4 ass where performance/power ratio is concerned, but on the mobile end of the CPU lineup they are playing catch-up for now.

Re:In other news..

[khrtt]

The last laptop with similar specs that I got was a T series ThinkPad, ordered directly from IBM. But it was <$1800, not <$1200.

Dell makes cheap students laptops, clunky, large and heavy. Don't tell me $600 extra is not too much for what you get. BTW, if you really want a "student"-type machine (which I define as a cheap general-purpose 7lb 15" laptop with an optical drive), why not get a Toshiba? Build quality is definately better than Dell, and the price is similar.

BTW, when you say ...Pentium M (or roughly similar AMD)..., do you realize that there is really no AMD processor similar to the Pentium M in performance/power consumption? AMD just doesn't make any CPUs comparable to PM. Their desktop 939pin 90nm cores kick P4 ass where performance/power ratio is concerned, but on the mobile end of the CPU lineup they are playing catch-up for now.

Re:Temperature Liability?

[aaronl]

Yeah, like hiring smart people such as Alpha processor engineers...