Tiny goes AMD

The dominoes continue to tumble as yet another OEM jumps from the good ship Intel Inside [Shurely "good ship Mixed Metaphor"? - Ed]. Tiny, one of the UK's largest PC outfits - with more than 130 stores and turning over $600 million last year - is adopting Athlon and Duron processors across its range.

The system builder, until recently a jewel in the crown of Intel UK, says the move comes as a result of its engineers' evaluation of the latest technology.

Neil Stevens, Tiny's Marketing Director, said, "We started offering AMD systems this morning and half our sales today have been AMD. We don't want to stay 100 per cent Intel - Duron is better value than Celeron and Athlon offers better performance than Pentium III.

"We held off adopting AMD until now because we weren't confident about the chipsets and motherboards. But now VIA has got its act together and the platforms are stable. AMD now has a reputation for quality and performance."

Tiny plans to pitch Celeron at the entry level, with Pentium III and Duron battling it out in the mid range and Athlon in high end systems. Stevens added that Tiny has no plans for Pentium 4 this year, referring to the forthcoming chip as 'very expensive'.

"Users can choose between a brand name or value for money," he continued. "By using AMD chips we can offer better graphics, sound and printers at no extra cost to the user."

Rival UK OEM Evesham has seen sales of its systems moving from 75 percent Intel to 75 percent AMD in the space of 18 months.

"AMD is doing extraordinarily well. Our best seller is a £959 AMD system," said an Evesham spokesperson. "It's probably down to review success - all our prize winners have been AMD systems.

"At the very high end and in business systems, there's still a touching faith in Intel. We weren't affected by Pentium III shortages for the simple reason that we're not selling enough of them for it to have become an issue," they added.

Robert Stead, European Marketing Director of AMD added, "AMD is extremely pleased that the UK's largest PC manufacturer has chosen Athlon and Duron processors for its Multimedia PC product range."

'Extremely pleased' is a refreshing example of understatement from a chipmonger. ®