Granted, there’s no denying that AMD has products that perform on par, or better than anything Intel has got, at a lower price. Many people have opted for an AMD processor in their system and never looked back. And to be honest we would recommend buying an AMD based PC as well, now that socket-478 has been phased out by Intel and the new socket-775 platform doesn’t really justify the higher price. If you go online or to a local retailer you’ll see that AMD PCs are not only affordable and offer lots of bang for the buck, they’re also in high demand. Surprisingly there’s one popular PC manufacturer that has yet to offer any AMD PCs though and that’s Dell. Whether it is due to a lush deal they have with Intel about volume pricing of their processors or the simple fact that Intel is able to ship millions of processors upon demand is anybody’s guess. Fact remains that other manufacturers were quick to adopt AMD, whereas Dell refuses to, despite many customers asking about AMD based PCs.

Dell’s stance on this is that they don’t see a strong demand from their customers and thus won’t consider AMD based PCs just yet. Dell’s CEO, Kevin Rollins, makes it very clear that Dell won’t be offer AMD based PCs anytime soon, by stating ‘We're the most successful PC company on the planet and we don't have AMD’. From our perspective this is rather shortsighted, as mentioned above an AMD based PC is every bit as competitive as anything Intel has to offer. So why does Dell refuse to sell AMD PCs? Well, it could be as simple as a deal they struck with Intel about exclusively selling PCs based on their processors, this deal could include a clause which prevents Dell from using AMD processors, much like the deal Microsoft made with Intel about processors for the Xbox. On the other hand it could be that Dell has too steep requirements in terms of shipped processors, which AMD cannot meet.

Either way it looks like Dell won’t be offering AMD based PCs soon, despite the fact that others do offer AMD PCs and their offerings are in high demand, more so than Intel’s. Whether it is a supply issue, or a deal that was struck with Intel preventing them to use AMD processors, isn’t it about time Dell reconsiders AMD? At the end of the day it is always better business practice to fill a demand as best you can then to completely ignore a demand. We’re quite confident that if Dell chooses to sell AMD based PCs they will not only continue to increase their profits, but will see a significant boost in revenues due to the new clientele buying AMD PCs from them.

Sander Sassen.