Dell to start using AMD Processors

[dubljay]

This is a strange turn of events... I wonder if it has more to do with AMD offering better products or Dell doesnt want anything do to with intel and its new(ish) relationship with Apple?

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19187210^15337^^nbv^15306-15316,00.html

 

[Grenadier]

Dell is always looking for ways to maximize profit. In the past, as you already know, they were exclusively Intel-based, and Intel and Dell had a mutually beneficial relationship. Michael Dell himself even testified at some of the Intel v. AMD hearings in court.

In the past, Intel was always ahead of AMD in terms of technology, especially considering that AMD's idea at the time, of R&D, was to reverse engineer Intel's CPU's (up to the 486). It made all of the sense in the world for Dell to stick with Intel, since they could get the best CPU's, and more importantly, first crack at Intel's best products. When the Intel Pentium hit, AMD was several years late getting a similar class of CPU available, and by the time they did, they couldn't scale up the performance nearly as well as Intel did.

AMD was more of a bottom feeder at the time, putting up their best products against Intel's mid-level products (at best). Intel pretty much held dominance all the way throughout the Pentium II / Pentium III era, when AMD could only muster up a K6-3 CPU. Anemic FPU performance made it a poor choice for gamers, since the Quake series was really taking off.

It wasn't until AMD finally introduced the K7 / Athlon, that they had a product that could compete with Intel on an equal footing. By this time, though, Intel and Dell had been so firmly entrenched with each other, that Michael Dell was getting some very sweet deals on Intel's top end processors, that no amount of AMD marketing could break.

Throughout the years, AMD has managed to maintain an equal footing with Intel, sometimes surpassing, and sometimes falling behind. It's a continual cycle at this rate. Dell had continually been spreading rumors of using AMD CPU's throughout these years. If it were my guess, it was probably solely to try to get better deals with Intel, so they could maintain their exclusivity.

When Intel's Conroe and Merom processors get released, you can darn well bet Dell will have first crack at them again. If Conroe and Merom do indeed perform as well as the initial tests have shown, then I wouldn't be surprised to see Dell going back to Intel exclusively, and simply relegate AMD back to a bargaining chip to use against Intel (pun intended).

AMD really doesn't have anything to re-re-take the performance crown, until 2007, unless there's something I've missed. Still, it's not as if Intel will suddenly gain all of the market again; far from it. Only the top end will be really affected.

Me? I'm not really apt to grab the latest and greatest performing processor. I usually buy mid level CPU's that offer the most bang / buck. In this case, I've been quite happy with my old Socket 754 Athlon 64 3000+ CPU, and don't intend on upgrading, since it runs all of today's applications quite nicely (yes, including the resource hungry games).

Maybe once the next generation of DDR2 platforms for AMD come out (and not this generation; no real increase in performance as expected), I'll take another hard look.

 

[HKphooey]

Dell was losing its foothold in the mid-level business machines. HP/Compaq and Sony were starting to take away small business purchases form Dell. They are using this move to reduce their prices to be competitive in the marketplace.

Article about it...
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?featureID=2547&pagtype=samecatsamechan