News Dell *heart* AMD

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/11/28/dell_amd/

 

Still a bit thick in the realm of marketting strategy, and I must also note that it IS the Inquirer we're talking about of course.

But at any rate, I must say that the biggest thing I've had against Dell is their refusal to use any processor not made by Intel. While this may be a good thing for laptops by increasing the portion utilizing those wondrous Pentium M chips, it also means that their machines are easy to beat if we're talking about gaming rigs, or any heavyweight that's going in for some serious parallel processing. As I recall, Cray Supercomputer now exclusively uses AMD Opteron processors for its units, and posts some disturbingly high results. Their flagship, the modular XD1, uses up 12 Opterons, with options ranging up to the dual-core, 8-link Opteron 875, and pumps out floating-point calculations at an absurd rate easily topping 100 gigaflops, not bad for a case that fits into 3U (6 inches) of rackmount server space.

At any rate, if Dell's potential switchover to AMD goes through, I wonder how long it would be before we see this spill over into the desktop section. They could do to include high-performance CPUs in their lineup that don't cost a fortune.

 

With the introduction of the Yonah processor from intel, I think they'll put something heavier on the board for desktops soon. You can't be one of the biggest companys in the world and not have something up your sleave...

 

AMD has been attacking every point of Intel over the past year or so.
If I am correct, they have them beat:
in the budget category Sempron over Celeron,
the low-midrange category Athlon XP whips up on P4s,
the athlon mobile fights back against the Pentium M,
and the 64 bit technology is over the top,
and now even server processors are being dominated by AMD.
I use both, but have had more success with an AMD. I will grant that maybe Intels are better for "office" work, but for the general stuff that the majority of small businesses and home users do...Dell would be at a huge advantage to cross platforms and offer both. Keep the Pentium M in laptops, but come on, put an AMD in a gaming or a budget machine- better performance for the home and casual user!

 

Translation for Intel's latest development efforts: "Intel discovers that they got it right the FIRST time around, and 4 years after abandonning the Pentium III's arcitecture for higher clock speeds, they've just realized their mistake."

In other words, Intel has been blindly going for the highest clock speeds for a selling point, but thanks to the clever invention of the R-rating made by AMD Cyrix, and some other companies some 15 or so years ago, they've realized that one can design and compete on actual performance specs without bothering with having the highest clock speed. Hence, Intel is FINALLY going back to bringing their Pentium M's arcitecture out as a viable PC microprocessor arcitecture. It's no surprise that if you clock them as high as they can safely go, the Pentium M will thoroughly thrash even the best Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors.

Just as a side note, The AthlonXP is no longer actually in AMD's main product line; the Sempron appears to be taking its place entirely, and also seems to be little different from a re-named AthlonXP. The Athlon64 is really spilling downward; with the Athlon64 3000+ Venice now costing less than $150US, the Athlon64 is really starting to be a viable choice for some of the lower levels, and not just the mid-range and higher.

I also recall that this fall season, after analysis, more PCs sold used AMD processors than Intel processors. AMD has made incredible gains in the past few years, I'd have to say. They didn't go much of anywhere other than a provider of "imitation x86" chips, but in 1999, when they unvieled the Athlon, things started to change. Today, AMD is now the clear leader for the most powerful CPUs. It's actually pretty nice to now have a fairly balanced two-company competition, rather than one big giant with some other tiny companies scampering around the giant's feet.