Eggs, baskets, etc
Our intel is that there will be between 50,000 and 100,000 Radeon HD 5800 series cards produced in the initial 40nm TSMC run, with a ratio of around 4:1 in favour of the 5870 over the 5850. We also gather that the channel - as opposed to OEMs - is likely to only get around ten percent of this.
And of course, it's not just the channel that could end up feeling alienated by this move - what about the other OEMs? HP, the world's biggest PC maker and traditional AMD ally, must be planning a Windows 7/DX11 launch of its own on 22 October. If AMD has denied HP requests in favour of Dell, that's not likely to go down well. And then there's Acer, Lenovo, etc.
As we reported earlier, the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series is looking like a very popular product, with pre-orders at unprecedented levels. AMD deserves to be commended for the way it has wrested the graphics initiative away from NVIDIA in the past year and deserves all the rewards this should bring.
But it seems to be staking a hell of a lot on one OEM by giving Dell so much of its initial allocation. Only time will reveal whether this gamble has paid off but AMD's graphics channel, other OEM partners and its consumers are unlikely to celebrate if it has once more sold its soul to Dell.
