ZDNet UK heeft een artikeltje over de terughoudendheid van grote OEMs tov de AMD Athlon. Zo hebben Dell en Gateway (deal met Intel) inmiddels besloten de Athlon voorlopig niet te zullen gebruiken. Het welbekende argument van AMD produktieproblemen wordt ook weer naar boven gebaggert:
Steve Duignan, UK product manager for Dell's Dimension range -- the desktop PC family currently using high-end Pentium III chips and thus most suited to AMD's Athlon. Although he admits that price/performance is usually paramount for Dell, he highlights the company's similar decision to adopt the Celeron processor early, when AMD's K6 was performing better in performance testing. "To be honest, we did evaluate the Athlon during pre-testing, as we always have done with previous AMD chips, but the big problem is the company's ability to supply," says Duignan. "AMD hasn't got a particularly good track record in its ability to ship to order and that's the kicker. We're not alone in this -- look at Gateway." [break] In de Coppermine, Intel's zoveelste P6 facelift, hebben ze op een of andere manier wel vertrouwen: [/break] [...] Duignan says: "With Coppermine in the pipeline, Intel looks as if it will regain the high ground. For a couple of months, AMD win the spec wars but they don't have an astounding combination of integration with the motherboard and further chipsets. It's a concern when it comes down to real life performance."
