Wednesday, December 4th 2019
Amidst Intel CPU Shortage Woes, Dell Reportedly Looking Into AMD Alternatives
That news title should come as a surprise to no one, and extends to most other PC makers who are affected by Intel's inability to keep up with demand on its 14 nm (+++++?) node. News of Intel's factories being outputting less than the entire professional and consumer markets are required has already been covered multiple times and in multiple ways. Sand steps Intel has taken to mitigate this issue whilst trying to solve its 10 nm execution woes range from moving chipset production up from its 14 nm nodes to 22 nm to free capacity, increase production capacity over the already installed one, and even outsource some of its silicon manufacturing to other players in the industry. However, these measures won't actually take effect in the availability equation in a heartbeat, and of course PC makers such as Dell, who has already revised its revenue forecast and placed the blame on Intel, are looking to alternatives.
Dell has already had some products based on AMD designs, but most of the company's lineups, irrespective of market, are based on Intel platforms. That they are considering AMD is obvious; all other makers are surely doing that, especially considering the overall value proposition from AMD CPUs. Dell CFO Tom Sweet, for one, told yahoo Finance that they are "Evaluating AMD" as a partner, and that they expect Intel's shortages to only by fixed by the second half of 2020. Should AMD be able to entrench themselves as a viable alternative (which they already are; but companies do take their business relations seriously, and they would do so even more when it comes to Intel), then they could carve themselves a space that would then be difficult for Intel to recover. or, of course, this news may serve only as a way for Dell and other manufacturers to put some pressure on Intel to achieve better materials acquisition deals - Intel is bound to be eager not to let AMD penetrate the market as much as their chips deserve to.
Sources:
Yahoo Finance, via Tom's Hardware
44 Comments on Amidst Intel CPU Shortage Woes, Dell Reportedly Looking Into AMD Alternatives
Hell at my job we issued a call back for intel units and now all we deploy daily is AMD laptops and desktops for the entire AT&T Workforce world wide. By 2020 all AT&T company PCs will be AMD Ryzen Pro powered.
I have 2005 deja vu...You forgot about unstable drivers.
I'd be curious to see how honest Intel has been with their clients and much inventory OEMs like Dell (and especially smaller ones) have just sitting in warehouses waiting for CPUs to arrive on top of their client complaints and losing revenue from potential new clients who can't buy anything...
But it seems like everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room; as both CPU makers failing to meet the current demand, how is more AMD based Dell PCs going to improve that situation in the short-term?
If AMD wants larger OEM deals, they need to be able to ship much higher volumes.
My 2700X also hit 4.398Ghz (effectively 4.4Ghz) on all cores at only 1.318 Volts, so I'm thinking I won the silicon lottery with that one.
I get that this is only my experience, but my experience cannot just be some freak outlier
If you're intending to overclock memory, you're not going to buy like a Dell OptiPlex…
And as for BIOS quality, that's mostly up to Dell.
So I dunno... IME they're an easy sell and people seem to be happy with them *shrug* No reason not to have them in pre-built machines IMO. Was glad to have them as an affordable option to offer. The same rules as with Intel... pick the right parts and things generally go pretty predictably smooth.