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

[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?

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

[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

[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

[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?

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...

[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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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:Get off the bandwagon and on with the future

[discstickers]

Because most people don't know it exists.

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...

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...

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

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: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.

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: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.

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..

[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: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

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.

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

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.

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.

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: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: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.

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.

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: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.