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Dell Rejects AMD Chips (again)
LarsWestergren writes "A few months ago Slashdot reported that Dell was considering using AMD for server CPUs, but most people rightly remained sceptical since Dell has announced this several times before and always backed out. Well, according to the Register you were right to be sceptical." From the article: "Dell, however, doesn't seem concerned by these pricing issues or the fact that Opteron outperforms Xeon on numerous benchmarks. 'We believe that Intel has responded,' Rollins said in the wire report. 'That is now beginning to put customers more at ease that they don't need to make a shift (to AMD).'"
They'd have to actually track which chip goes in which board.
If Dell doesn't want to switch to a better product then the question then becomes "why not switch away from Dell?"
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.
They get Intel jealous by flirting with AMD and when Intels reluctantly lowers their price Dell goes back to Intel. It is likely that they would do to Microsoft with Linux or *BSD to get the price of Windows down.
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"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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
It's Dell. They make inferior computers for people who don't know anything beyond how to turn it on.
...Sigh...
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:
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth
Don't forget also that the key to Dell's performance is it's supply chain performance, which relies on just-in-time deliveries and vendor-managed inventory. It would be a huge operational risk to switch vendors like that, so AMD would have to provide more than just a better processor to win that business.
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How about one CPU being at least as 'fast' (in real world terms) as another mfger's CPU even though running at a lower clocks speed, and running significantly cooler and using a lot less power? AND it's less expensive than that rival mfger's CPU. Oh and it's 64 bit as opposed to the other mfger's CPU which is 32 bit.
Yes, you are a prick.
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.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
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.
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.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
"...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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The gamerz who care only about FPS bragging rights, and the IT professionals who have to take Real Life operational requirements into consideration. My site operates thousands of workstations and scores of servers. They suck a ton of power, and the money for the electric bill comes out of my depts budget. CPUs which consume less power, and run cooler, while delivering the same amount (or more) of processing horsepower is of great interest. And 64 bit? Sure. Many of the WS's run Windows, but many more don't, and none of the servers do either. 64 bit is an important consideration to some. We aren't all playing games on overclocked Pentiums with boy-racer neon and twelve LED-equipped fans, knowing that mom and dad pay the bills.
Dell sells a great number of computers, but really, AMD needed OEMs during the days of the K5, and early days of the Athlon. since the Athlon grabbed the lead, and now since the Athlon64 is leading all CPUs, AMD really doesnt need Dell. Anyone looking for performance gets an Athlon64 server. Anyone looking for big-company machines gets IBM or Sun. Anyone looking for cheap servers would get Dell, unless they want to go real cheap in which case they'd choose a custom-built server using AMD (Dells cheapest server is $480, IBM's 206 is $500 CDN).
So really Dell is counting on Intel's special price-cuts for Dell for profits. As soon as that dries up, or if Intel provides such pricecuts to HP or the likes, Dell will simply have to get back to AMD.
Customers with brand-name loyalty will always go to IBM or sun, have never seen brand-name loyalty to HP or Dell. Either way AMD's lack of reliabiity is the last of reasons to not sell AMD
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
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.
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...
With so much bitching about how much Dell sucks and AMD is better blah blah blah, I thought I'd offer my experience.
First off, I have never dealt with Dell Home before, only Dell Small Business. Rumor has it that the latter division has better prices. What I needed was a 1U dual processor rack mount server. I needed it for a crazy low price because it was going to feed a donation-funded service, and I needed the hardware before I could wait for the cash. I looked at almost everyone I could find: HP and IBM were way too expensive for what I could find (their websites were kind of annoying too), random box vendors like Monarch wanted to charge me for shit like $80 to install Fedora (no thanks, I wanted Debian) and other stuff like silver grease for $15 per processor, and others like Penguin Computing who looked great but were just too expensive.
Ultimately it came down to some Dell 1U servers that were giving away free double hard drive capacity upgrades and double RAM on their magic rotating deals. Yeah, the deal changes and will probably be better next week, but what the hell. I bought two and waited.
The servers are very nice for the price. They come with wonderful stuff like BIOS level serial console redirection, too, that seems to be some super-cost option from random box builder. They're rock solid, very fast, and Dell builds them with Linux support in mind anyway. I bought mine with no OS, rather than paying some mystical install tax.
I like AMD processors as well as the next guy - all three desktop systems I've built have been AMD processors. But I went with Dell because they had what I needed with a price I was willing to pay for it. I am, by no means, a "cost is no object" player and I really don't have an extra $600 to fudge with.
Now, if I missed someone out there who can beat the $1500 price tag (I usually buy in multiples of two) of the Dells I have that uses Opteron processors, I will definately look at them for my next purchase. I prefer AMD, but the Xeons in my Dell servers will have to do.
As I sad at the beginning, maybe this isn't the case when you are looking for home computers or some workstations, but I buy Apple for that stuff, anyway. Mac for the desktop and iX86 for the rack. The Xserve is nice, but fscking expensive.
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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.