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Dell Might do AMD
mboverload writes "In a move that will surely make waves in the industry, Dell's CEO, Kevin Rollins, has said they may provide machines decked out with AMD CPU's if their customers really want them. "We are still looking at AMD; they have fairly good technology," said Rollins. "
They'll never do it.
Dear Dell,
Please continue to offer less choices at higher prices.
Please continue to lock us in to Intel only.
Please continue to outsource your support to the clueless.
Please continue to... nevermind, I found another company.
Wow! This is turning out to be a remarkable year!
Not only are we getting Linux on the Desktop, but we're also getting AMD in Dells!
Just like last year!
Heard that. I give it a month before they revert back to their intel ways...
Call Dell and say you want quotes for an Opteron system. Dell does listen to Customers.
I wonder what kind of concession Dell wants from Intel this time 'round.
Does anyone else get the feeling that Dell doesn't know what the heck they're doing with AMD?
I guess everytime they want to apply pricing pressure on Intel, they submit a story to Slashdot.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I find it hard to believe that the average dell customer, the essentially computer illiterate home user just looking to check their e-mail and use office software really cares what CPU they have, if they even understand the difference. If people are looking for a high-end machine to get better fps at "insert game here," they usually aren't even looking at Dell.
Haven't they already said that several times? Someone at dell might just really hate AMD enough to play games with them.
they have fairly good technology," said Rollins
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I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
where ever it mentions AMD, swap this with linux and you can gauge the progress here. Dell is always "might" this and that.
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Rollin's noncommittal comment that they have 'fairly good technology' certainly stands out. It confirms the impression he's trying to convey that Dell would only be interested in going with AMD if the customers really want it.
Perhaps he intends to use this as a bargaining chip not with Intel, but with AMD!
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Personally, though, I'm typing this on an AMD-64 Acer. Behind it is an iMac. What is this Dell and this Intel of which you speak?
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Why haven't they done this before? I mean, a large part of their business is selling to corporations. AMD chips are very stable compared to what they used to be, they're cheaper, and they're plenty fast enough for standard business desktops. Being cheaper, you'd think most companies would go with the AMD, so that when it came time to upgrade a few desktops, it wouldn't break the budget.
Personally, being the IT guy at my company, I always buy AMD systems. About the same bang for way less bucks. And let's face it, the suits up top love it when you can add a bit more to the bottom line.
We have seen these articles before. However, with Intel having to switch to dual core to increase performance due to nearing a brickwall in the area of performance increase via CPU clock increasing, perhaps Dell sees AMD as a better partner. AMD is no longer the butt of egg frying on CPU jokes thanks to their new power saving chips that actually put out less heat than Intel's Pentium 4 offerings. If I were him, I would start with AMD64 servers, because without a 64-bit AMD server offering, I think Dell is losing alot of orders to other companies like MBX.
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FTFA:"We are still looking at AMD; they have fairly good technology"
Fairly good? What rock have they been hiding under all these years?
This already was said in the past. It won't happen.
See, Intel has 80% of the desktop market and 90-95% of the x86 server market. This is quite unlike to change. It doesn't really matters how fast are AMD CPUs, people seems to care more about the chipsets, and that's the achiles' heel of AMD, they just make CPUs not chipsets.
With intel, I can buy a motherboard with a intel or serverworks chipsets, which is not exactly the same than a VIA/Nvidia shitty chipset that people uses with AMDs.
Dell's talked about this before and it's always seemed to me that they play the AMD card in order to force Intel to give 'em a sweeter deal. Sort of like when AOL threatens to use Netscape instead of IE as their default web browser. Just exerting leverage - they won't really ever do it (though I'd love to be proven wrong).
James
"We are still looking at AMD; they have fairly good technology," said Rollins.
AMD's technology is on par with Intel. It's their marketing that falls short.
I mean, nVidia just did this new P4 chipset to let you pull their dual-GPU trick on Intel, and since all the hardcore gamers use Athlon-64 about the only market for this chipset is Dell. If Dell starts shipping AMD there goes the market...
Nobody seriously considering changing suppliers calls the new supplier's stuff "fairly good." What's their slogan if they make the switch?
Dell Computers - Now with fairly good technology!
Funny.. I run an AMD Athlon XP2600+ and have been running this system with an Abit board for about 2 years now.
I don't remeber the last time it crashed on me actually - it has been impeccably reliable, and performance is still good despite its age!
I reckon timing is about right.. its been, what, 5 or 6 months since the last time 'Dell might have been going to do AMD'. I've lost count of how many times this has been claimed, its certainly been going on for something like 5 years now. I'll believe in an AMD based Dell the moment I see one for sale on their website. Till then the speculation is pointless, Dell have always done this to ensure Intel continue to give them good prices.
"Joy is not in things; it is in us." Richard Wagner
If Dell, who has a significant presence in Austin, were to start buying from AMD, who also has a significant presence in Austin, they may be able to get some tax breaks from the Austin city council, who also have (unfortunately for Austin residents) a significant presence on Austin.
I know it's an impossibility and AMD would be insane to do it but Dell seems like they've played this particular note so many times in the past that I'd like to see AMD answer once with a press release going something like this:
Today, in one of the strangest announcements by a technology company in recent memory AMD said that their rival Intel should in no way be concerned about the recent comments from computer maker Dell and that no Dell computer would ever feature an AMD processor regardless of how much Dell was willing to pay for them. Said AMD "Dell makes crap and we won't be a party to it at any price!"
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If Dell will do this what will happen soon:
:)
1. I'll get AMD notebook and desktop at work (100% Dell oriented) because they are cheaper
2. C# compiler will be running faster
3. My boss will force me to work faster because of that
NOW, I CAN ALWAYS SAY:
This cannot run faster because it's Intel
If they do this, I'll be P4 for gaming in opposite.
I have an AMD box that I put a video-capture card into and I wouldn't be able to capture more than a few minutes of video before the system would either lock-up or spontaneously reboot.
It's just as likely you have a flacky motherboard or flacky ram as chipset incompatibilities. For example, my system here started to suffer from random reboots and crashes till I finally isolated the problem to the memory having single bit errors when warm. I run an AMD 2800xp, have 3 drives, and my PCI slots are full. While my cooling system should be adquate [120mm case fan running 5v rather than 12v, 90mm power supply fan, 70mm cpu fan, 60mm GFX fan]. My issues go away when I use PNY memory, and they go away when I add fans and run coverless. I am able to capture up to 4hrs of video without crashing.
One of the reasons I started going with VIA chipset motherboards was the compatibility with a vast variety of memory including that cheepo stuff. The disadvantage is you get given this cheepo stuff that people can't use on their intel chipsets that has intermittent hard to diagnose issues. Also many OEMs designate AMD as the cheep system and use sub standard parts doesn't really help matters.
There were issues with non-intel chipsets in the 1990s. Microsoft was pretty much an intel only house and no thought was given to anything else. I remember many headaches with TNT2 video cards and both Cyrix and VIA chipsets. But these days AMD is very popular at MS esp since the AMD Opteron.
Why not bring up your issues on your friendly neighborhood capture card news group, and your motherboard's newsgroup. If nothing else there always is someone out there to help you with trouble shooting, or perhaps someone already documented the issue.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Dell has said this every 6 months or so for the past.. well, since I can remember. They say it to get better deals from intel. In 2 months you'll have a story saying 'Dell decided to stick with intel after all'.
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I think Dell will use nVidia's nForce series of chipsets if they do decide to build machines using AMD CPU's. Also, Dell will probably limit themselves to the Athlon 64 CPU's for their desktop machines (they likely won't support Sempron CPU's initially because currently Sempron doesn't support x86-64 instructions).
So basically what they're saying, is that they asked their customers what they wanted and now they will give them what they wanted... This is exactly the sort of non-sense non-news press release thats designed to get free advertising by pretending to be informative. All Dell are saying is that they might start selling a product if the demand is there, D'UH thats exactly what 1000's of businesses around the world do every day. It would be news if Dell came out and said "actually you know what? we've been using Intel for years and we don't actually have any sort of market research team checking for better products or customer opinion because infact we don't give a shit and we're going to just keep selling whatever crap we feel like even if no-one buys it because thats the sort of chaps we are".
In other news, IBM have announced that they will continue to sell high-performance e-business slutions at competative prices and are currently developing new products based on the current industry trends!
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No, everyone's missing it. It's not pressure on Intel, it's pressure on AMD. Dell is saying to AMD, you must, ABSOLUTELY FUCKING MUST, meet our part quota every quarter, no shortchanging us, no sending our parts to IBM, Acer, Toshiba, because we're gonna ship 250,000 units this year, and we're not going to lose our hardwon customers to someone else. So get your shit in gear, and once you prove you can keep the pipeline FLOODED, we'll talk.
AMD doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to supply the entire world + Dell. If Dell loses their massive Intel CPU discounts, they lose the bulk of their competitive edge. If they don't offer Opteron servers (especially now that the dual-cores are coming out), they're going to take a nasty hit to their server sales. Until AMD has the capacity to mostly replace Intel, Dell just has to smile and say "Do you want HypeThreading with that?" and hope people keep buying. It helps that most people are too clueless to know what they're missing, plus even a Celeron is enough to "surf the Information Superhighway, d00dz!"
Next year, when AMD's new 65nm fab is up and running and Charter (and IBM?) start fabbing AMD CPUs too, THEN things will get interesting.
"We are still looking at AMD; they have fairly good technology," said Rollins.
He went on to say that "Dell excels to use as many fairly good components as possible. Dell strives for mediocre computers, and that can only be done by using adequate, middling componentry sourced from the most average manufactures in the world"
Mr. Rollins went on to attack other vendors. "IBM and Apple, well, they think they produce pretty good products too. But the public knows better - excellent design, manufacturing, componentry, and software does not make for a pretty good product. That's why Dell is the market leader".
Many consumers agree. In recent reports, Dell consistently hits the "adequate" mark in customer satisfaction. "We don't want our customers to think we're better than anyone else - people are put off by that kind of talk. It's kind of like the Bush/Kerry campaigns. We have to work very hard to be average in this business."
Dell is now considering AMD, but Dell still has some concern that AMD processors may not be average enough. Rollins says that Dell looked at AMD's products a few years back, and "they kicked some butt. But that's not the Dell way. We're hoping that now their products are getting a little dull - but only some fairly standard analysis will tell. We hope that they'll hit our mark, more or less."
We want Linux desktops too. Can you take care of that for us pls? kthx.
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Dell has threatened to do this before. In the past, it may have been posturing to get a better deal from Intel. This time it may be more realistic because of only 1 factor. The Opteron. Intel's Itanium has lost major support from Windows, IBM, and other players. The Opteron is getting all the attention. Maybe Intel will build something to match it in the future. However, if Dell wants to build a 64-bit server for their customers, the only game right now is AMD.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
As others have pointed out, the issue MUST be a matter of price. There's certainly little-to-no valid technological reason for Dell not to offer AMD anymore. We're not talking slightly incompatible CPUs that need instruction-translators.
Having said that, I still have to let customers know that it's okay to get off the Intel teat when thinking about a new computer. People like that brand recognition. If Dell starts pushing AMD, they'll have to go through some customer-training on what a AMD is and why it's just as good as Intel. That will piss off Intel, no doubt.
Otherwise, what? Just stick it in a catalog? People won't buy it. The fact it's not an Intel will be major turn-off.
Dell's kind of in a Damned-If-You-Do/Don't situation here.
I would love to see Dell push AMDs on the lower-cost systems and stick to Intel for higher-priced systems designed for certain applications. I realize that AMD can fulfill both roles, but this might be a good way to introduce the line to customers. Besides, I'd take a Sempron over a Celery right now.
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Dell pulls this stunt every year. They simple use it as a way to scare Intel in giving them better pricing on CPU's. Dell will never support AMD. Ever. So long as Intel succombs to their threats every time, Dell will stay an Intel only house.
...[A]ny decision to make AMD its second supplier of microprocessor chips, which function as the brains of PCs, would be complicated by the sweeping changes required for related components inside Dell PCs.
On a side note, Mr Rollins made a statement, paraphrased as such:
WTF? What sweeping changes? You can use the same PSU, video cards, RAM, NICs, HDDs and software. The only change you're making is the motherboard. Which is mooted by the fact Intel requires mobo changes every so often thanks to its unreliance on one socket format. It's really becoming no news at all when Dell touts they may use AMD chips at some point. It's never happened and the changes of it happening anytime soon are nil.
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Look at the published % margins of Intel and AMD and realize that this is much greater gap than you would get simply from Intel's ability ot command a price premium -compared to AMD, Intel's manufacturing costs per die are LESS, so it's not "so expensive".
/.ers are infuriated that the stock market doesn't reward AMD stock price like that of Intel stock price, but if they understood that share value is determined by the ability to make money, not just pump out cool stuff, they'd understand. Making money means keeping your cost-to-selling-price ratio healthy and AMD doesn't manufacture at lowest price and doesn't sell for a premium price.
Say what you want about AMD's microprocessor design prowess, they are definately not in Intel's league in terms of wafer yield and other areas of manufacturing prowess that dictate cost to produce.
Many clueless
(BTW, please don't assume this represents some kind of consumer-friendly behaviour for AMD - if they could charge a big premium over Intel's product, they would in a heartbeat. And of course, the poster that said this is a price negotiation tool on Dell's part is correct)
Just go do it for fun...
After all Dell said if enough customers demand it...
And actually I think Dell do listen. After all they brought back some call handling to US from India after there were complaints. In contrast HP has done like what?
Just in this case I think Dell have got a really really sweet deal with Intel. So they'll see how much they can squeeze Intel. And then they'll go do the figures and then the rest of us can go try guess how sweet the deal was and the next deal is...
Probably the same thing Walmart does. No matter what your prices are, come next year they will want it lowered.
I doubt Dell will add AMD to their choices. They leverege their prices by using one supplier. If AMD takes sales from Intel, Intel will not give Dell as good a price.
I know some will be ticked off. But for the poor, you can't do better than a Dell. $250 will get you a P4 2.4+ghz system with a 80 gig hard drive and 256 megs. Go on the right day, and they might be offering double RAM or double hard drives for the same price. I even saw it fall to $220 once, but that is rare. Just click on small buisness, not residential. And add your own OS, linux or whatever. Only downside is there is no video card, but 64 and some 128 meg video cards are dirt cheap.
You can't get a good machine off ebay used for the price of a new dell.
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>> AMD chips are very stable
Have you tried using > 4GB on your AMD64 ? If you are like me, you get daily crashes. Why ?
Go read the April 7 slashdot posting here.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=127
AMD64 systems have proplems with fully populated DIMMS. Crap like this is unacceptable to corporations purchasing 1000's of boxes. It is also unacceptable to DELL. Every customer problem cost DELL money.
Well, that but they could save a license and sell it to someone who wanted it and would really use it, and maybe it would help offset the shipping costs.
:)
If you do, make sure it's a private sale and don't put it on eBay. The Doctrine of First Sale won't keep you out of court, and it'll cost lots of broilers to do it!
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I'll vouch for Dell hardware any day. I've worked with a lot of newer dell hardware, from Dimensions to Optiplexes to some of their server line, and they're definitely solidly put together and well designed, much better than most other computer manufacturers.
The dimension 2400 sitting next to my desk right now has been running non stop since it arrived with the exception of the installation of a S3 ViRGE video card as a second monitor. My only complaint is that they didn't include an AGP port, but for the money, I can't complain.
It's been a long time.
^^^^^
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It would be cool if it didn't suck.