14 DAY TRIAL // Dell uses only Intel chips for its computers, but recent news reveal that AMD is surpassing Intel in the USA retail market. Also, it appears that Wal-Mart will sell AMD based notebooks and desktops for only US$398. Is Dell trying to see how its customers react to AMD products?
If you log in to Dell.com you will find strange the fact that the company is selling AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) processors. Dell offers six AMD Athlon 64 chips that are individually packaged for sale. The speeds of the processors start at 2.0 GHz and rise up to 2.8 GHz while the prices vary from US$1,100 for an Athlon 57FX processor to US$219 for an Athlon 3500. Though, the computer maker is not selling other AMD chips, like the new Turion which is made for laptops or Opteron, designed for servers.
Over the past years, Dell's competitors, such as IBM, Sun or HP launched computers based on AMD processors, but all this time Dell used Intel chips exclusively, even if lately Intel hasn't kept the pace with AMD's technological advance.
In this context a question rises: why is Dell selling AMD chips?