Dell AMD Desktop PCs now Available, Notebooks Coming Soon

Today, for the first time ever, Dell offers customers the option to choose an AMD processor in a Dell Dimension desktop PC system. The new Dell Dimension E521 and Dimension C521 are both AMD processor based systems. The question now is, when do we see notebooks with AMD mobile processors?

Dell actually introducedfour new PC systems: the Dimension E520,E521, C521 and XPS 210. The Dimension E520 and E521 are mainstream desktop systems that can be had for cheap, the E520 is offered with the Intel Pentium D or Core 2 Duo processor while the Dimension E521 is offered with AMD Sempron, Athlon 64 or Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors. The Dimension C521 is a slimmed down version of the E520/E521 and is also offered with the same suite of AMD processors as the E521. The XPS 210 is a performance system offered only with Intel Core 2 Duo.

If you visit the Dell.com website for the new Dimensions you'll see that the AMD based E521 system starts at a significantly lower price than the Intel basedE520:

The $329 starting price of the E521 is due to the fact the low-end AMD Sempron 3400+ is offered in the baseline system. The $719 starting price of the Dimension E520 comes with a Pentium D processor. Somewhat interesting is that when you go to configure a Dimension E520 there's a call-out in that section of the website that says "More value with AMD" in what would appear to be an effort to drive customers to choose the AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core over the same priced Intel Pentium D processsor, below is a screenshot showing this pro-AMD marketing:

(view large image)

So it appears that the AMD and Dell relationship is indeed expanding and Dell is definitely playing up and promoting the AMD offerings on its site. Since Dell introduced AMD processors into servers first, now desktops, the next natural progression is to notebooks. And that will happen.

It will likely be end of October or beginning of November when Dell releases its first AMD based notebooks. First 15.4" screen notebooks with AMD processors will be released and then later inDecember a 17" screen AMD based notebook. This information is based on reports from Digitimes.com and comments made in Taiwan by a Dell executive to ZDNet Asia. We don't expect the new AMD notebooks to offer much new in terms of design -- indeed it's likely that the same Dell notebooks currently offered will simply be offered with the option of AMD processors. Such as the current Inspiron e1505 being offered asan e1506 following along the lines of the +1 added to AMD Dimension system model numbering.

So a recap of why Dell is offering AMD processors in desktops now and will in notebooks soon:

• HP is Dell's #1 competitor in the notebook space. HP has offered both AMD and Intel equivalentsfor all of their notebook systems for a long time. HP has been taking market share from Dell recently and soDell wants to make sure theyoffer the same processor options as HP(business related).
  
• AMD has a lot of budget processor options and lower prices on low-end processors, Dell can offer very aggressively priced systems with low-end AMD processors to capture more of the budget market (business related).
  
• To give customers more choice options (warm and fuzzy customer relations related)
  
• So Dell can pit Intel and AMD against one another to get better pricing from each supplier (business related).

 

I thought they were going to release AMD servers first.

 

After several years Dell managed to pick the exact timing when AMD lost its edge over Intel , nice move .

 

i think it might boil down to the AMD price reductions...Dell always looks for cheap options

 

they did, in June actually.

 

Really? I don't see any AMD server on Dell web site.
I thought they only announced not released it in June.

 

I still think that "AMD Athlon X2" looks out of place on Dell's site, I suppose because they were Intel-only for so long. Good to see though.

 

This was the only way for Dell to keep its performance as a company at an acceptable level. However, this relationship could have been established earlier...

 

performance or profit?

 

Haha so true.

It will be good for dell's budget end though.

 

proof please. and forget about super pi.

 

So Dell picked the moment when AMD's reputation was at its peak, but their CPUs will have to be available relatively cheaply to stay competitive. Personally I don't see the problem, at least from Dell's point of view.

Also, Intel's edge comes from their Core architecture CPUs. Didn't Intel say that most of their desktop CPUs would still be P4s until 2008 or so?

 

here is pretty concise report:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2014655,00.asp
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996946,00.asp

Both concludewith intel being faster. Im notsaying the x2 is bad though its still very good and is well priced but it isnt the best time to start with AMD when intel have just released their next gen cpu. But it isnt going to harm dell by giving their customers a wider variety.

Didnt know that-very interesting.

 

Core 2 Duo is faster then AMD's Athlon X2/FX processors in nearly every application across the board. The E6600 goes head to head against AMD's flagship FX-62 and the X6800 is much faster.

I can tell you what two of the main reasons were for Dell to adopt AMD processors in their desktop/notebook line. First was because Intel made the decision to stop offering OEM's the huge price cuts in comparison to the retail channel market. Intel wanted to close the gap between pricing and be able to offer retail vendors the same kind of pricing they were offering the OEM's. Second was because Conroe and Merom were likely to be in shorter supply for a while and the OEMs like Dell and HP ship hundreds of thousands of desktops and notebooks. Dell needed to secure more processors at a good price in order to make sure they didn't run into a shortage problem. You can see how the ETA's are now when you order a notebook with one of the higher-end C2D processors. Intel is still planning to ship a large percentage of Pentium 4 based processors for the rest of this year and into the next so they are only beginning to ramp the production of C2D processors. I'm sure Intel has a huge stockpile of Pentium 4 processors to get rid of still.