Dell speaks out over AMD 'shortages'

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 17 Oct 2006 at 15:34

Dell has broken its silence on the AMD chip shortages that have seen several PC manufacturers forced to jump ship to Intel.

As we exclusively reveal in this month's PC Pro (on sale 19 October), one PC manufacturer claims AMD is starving the supply of its high-end chips to smaller OEMs in order to meet its new commitment to Dell. Leaked reports suggest that AMD has agreed to supply 20 million chips to the world's biggest PC maker by the end of 2007, leaving other manufacturers with only "handfuls" of high-end processors.

Dell had previously refused to discuss the shortages, but at a briefing with PC Pro earlier today, the company claimed it had a bountiful supply of AMD processors. "The one thing we would have made sure of with AMD is that they could adhere to our demand. We haven't seen any significant issues in terms of supply. It's been very finely managed," said Adam Griffin, channel marketing executive at Dell.

Griffin does admit, however, that Dell's build-to-order policy may have come as a culture shock to AMD. "How we do business is different to how it [AMD] has dealt with partners in the past," he said.

Yet, despite AMD's best efforts to stay in Dell's good books, the PC giant claims Intel still has the edge when it comes to high-performance chips. "In the past, when we've been Intel only, we've struggled to match AMD's performance at the high end. The Core 2 Duo is showing better performance [than AMD's chips] at the moment. But AMD's next generation processors may change that again," said Griffin.