News - Dell launches new AMD desktop range

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Speculation that relationship may be warming up as Dell actively promotes new SKU.

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Huzzah for AMD being back in Dell's lineup and all, but why on earth are these systems all shipping with K8 or 65nm K10 CPUs? Where's the Phenom II / Athlon II lineup?!?

Or could it be something to do with this:

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Originally Posted by Hexus

The, now fabless, chip company actually managed slightly higher revenue than expected of $1.184 billion, but this still led to a loss of $330 million, which would have been even worse were it not for the sales of $86 million of inventory that had already been written-down.

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Now, it could just be my inherent cynicism, but does anyone else see anything fishy about AMD selling $86M of written down inventory, followed by Dell releasing a range of Desktops featuring aging, redundant CPUs...? ;)

They're not redundant, if they're put together properly and at the right price point, these could be so very nice low powered desktops.
Whilst these pale in comparison to most dual-cores, let alone i7, how many people actually need that sort of power in a machine ? These Sempron LE processors are at least twice as fast as the Atoms in netbooks/nettops and are probably drawing 50-60w at max load. Yes, these aren't high-end games machines but they also aren't costing you £100 a year in running costs.

My main complaints are that these need to be priced at £199 and be in a SFF case.

Oh, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them, but they are aging technology - the Sempron LE is a K8 processor for flip's sake - that's essentially 6 year old technology - and AMD have now replaced the entire Phenom series top to bottom with 45nm models: the Athlon II X2s start at < &#163;50.

Note that I'm not saying the processors are 'obsolete' - that would be something entirely different, and I agree that they are perfectly acceptably performing processors in their own right, but in comparison with AMDs currently processor line they are 'redundant' - i.e. they have been replaced by better performing alternatives with lower power draws at similar price points. In a brand new computer they just don't make sense.

The one processor here I might make an exception for is the Sempron LE, since there's no single core processors in the current line up (and nothing with as low a power draw). It looks like AMD might be abandoning single-core forever...