While speaking to our customers, I'm often asked why we don't carry a specific brand or type of product. For example, AMD recently released a CPU called Ryzen that competes with Intel CPUs. AMD is positioning these chips as comparable to Intel's offerings but at a lower price. Some customers are interested in how these new chips stack up.
Our approach at Puget Systems is to evaluate new products to see if they would improve the products we offer today. We also listen to our customers to gauge their interest and needs. As we began to move into workstations designed for customers using Adobe Premiere and Lightroom, we became aware of their serious storage needs. We decided to have Puget Labs look into storage solutions that would meet their needs. That resulted in us offering external Glyph drives.
Decisions like this can take months because we want to make certain we're offering the best of the best. If you want a good product, you can go to NewEgg or Amazon and browse through hundreds of reviews. You might even find someone who actually purchased and used the product!
That's not how we operate.
We bring in new products, and have our technicians put them through stress tests and benchmarks. Not only must they perform well, but they must be reliable and adequately supported by the PC ecosystem. That means as well as a new CPU might perform, it still requires a compatible motherboard and RAM. We also must be able to take consistent delivery of every product we offer.
Most products don't make it out alive. Some good products don't fit into our product line. That's unfortunate, but that's how it works.
And this brings me back to AMD.
I'm not alone at Puget Systems when I say that I'd love to see AMD go toe-to-toe with Intel like two heavyweight fighters in their prime. I have fond memories of heading off to Fry's to purchase an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ CPU that would become the foundation of my PC for the next five years. I became a fan of AMD on that day and have rooted for them since.
Intel would eventually release their Core 2 technology on the world and, well…you know the rest of the the story. AMD was out and my new computer was built with an Intel CPU. And that's been the case ever since.
Rooting for Intel is what it must feel like to root for the New England Patriots. Each year both roll out new products and new players in a system that's built to win. Their dominance is almost taken for granted at this point.
Intel has invested billions in R&D and deserves its lofty position atop the desktop/server chip food chain. We currently offer only Intel CPUs because they work best in the products our customers demand. That doesn't mean we won't continue to evaluate the competition like we did this past week with a number of Ryzen performance articles for Premiere Pro, Lightroom, SOLIDWORKS and Photoshop.
Our goal has never been to offer the most products to the widest range of customers. I doubt you'll find us selling tablets, all-in-ones, or super-thin laptops anytime soon. Our goal is to build the very best desktops, workstations and servers and then optimize them for the workloads of our customers.
This means we won't be able to offer every new product. That means some good products won't make the cut. Some people might be unhappy with our choices. But at the very least, we hope you'll respect our philosophy behind the products we offer.