Digital Home Thoughts: The End of an Era: Dell to Use AMD Chips

"Dell, which has used only Intel processors until now, announced yesterday that it would begin using a chip made by Advanced Micro Devices, as part of a broader plan to improve its flagging sales and market share. Dell said that by the end of the year, it would start using an A.M.D. Opteron chip in one of its high-end servers with multiple processors. "It's a fairly small category," Kevin B. Rollins, chief executive of Dell, said on a conference call with analysts. He did not rule out using A.M.D. chips in Dell's PC's or in other servers, but he said that Intel would remain the supplier of the "vast majority of processors we use." Mr. Rollins outlined several personal computer products that the company planned to introduce this year, and all of them will use Intel chips."



Well, so far it's only the Opteron that Dell's taking on, and only in one model of server, but it's definitely the end of an era for Dell and Intel. So far they're not planning on releasing any desktop PCs with AMD chips, but I say it's only a matter of time. AMD's desktop chips have been better for some time now (unless you use Adobe products) and it's nice to see that Dell is finally taking price-to-performance ratios seriously. With any luck they'll ditch that old Celeron in favor of a Duron (OK, Sempron :wink:) in their low-end PCs. Just don't expect it anytime in the next year or so.