Het voortdurende tekort aan 1GHz processors gaat Intel een flink deel van haar inkomsten kosten, als de geruchten van The Register waar zijn. Dell (een van de grootste en meest loyale Intel-afnemers) zou bang zijn tijdens de feestdagen veel geld mis te lopen omdat Intel niet genoeg 1GHz CPU's kan leveren. Daarom zouden ze binnenkort Thunderbirds in plaats van Pentium III's willen gaan gebruiken voor hun high end systemen. Er zijn twee artikelen waarin aanwijzingen te vinden zijn voor de vermeende overstap van Dell, beiden helaas in het Chinees. Gelukkig was een Chinese lezer van The Register zo vriendelijk even een vertaling te maken:
Today it collects a piece of news from "Commercial and Industrial Times", which I beleive is a major Taiwan local media, like Reuters or CNN in US. The article manily discussing the Taiwan chipset industry. Three Taiwan chipset companies, VIA, SIS and ALi owns 50%-55% global chipset market share totally. They said ALi can not keep their chipset sales level this quater, and possibly next quarter, because ALi's major client, Dell, just decided to use non-Intel CPU. I guess they are talking about AMD.
[...] Another source is an independent web site. It's first time I see this site, so I can't comment their accuracy. They clearly indicate that Dell has decided to use AMD CPU. They said the reason is Intel delays P4, so Dell has to use AMD 1G CPU to increase Christmas sales.
If Dell wants to use AMD CPU, they need to contact Taiwan chipset and motherboard to prepare supply two or three months before actual shipment. So it's reasonble that Taiwan companies will know the news before hand.[break]Update: The Register meldt nu uit "industry sources" gehoord te hebben dat Dell niet van plan is om op dit moment haar loyaliteit tegenover Intel te doorbreken:[/break]Industry sources today confirmed that there was "no plans", imminent or otherwise by Dell to use AMD chips. This news, or to be more precise, the absence of news, follows a report from CTECH, a Chinese-language newspaper based in Taiwan over the weekend that claimed Dell was to source AMD Athlons in time for Christmas.
A second story, also Chinese-language, purporting to come from The Commercial and Industrial Times made the same claims. However, we are are unable to establish whether this article ever existed - which means it was a hoax.