Alienware appears to be mismarketing the Aurora R10 AMD Ryzen 5000 systems in favor of the R12 Intel Rocket Lake ones ^↺

Intel has certainly been trying to seem more discreet when it comes to marketing ploys directed at AMD in the past several years. We have been hearing some reports regarding certain problems with the marketing of AMD-based mini PCs or laptops, but nothing too blatant that would match Intel’s behavior from the early 2000s. However, a new report coming from Extremetech regarding Alienware’s misrepresentation of its AMD-based Aurora PCs as opposed to the Intel-based models is quite the reminder that the big OEMs still choose to side with Intel. After all, Intel did admit at some point that “Dell is the best friend money can buy.”

Here is a list with the most jarring discrepancies spotted between the Intel-based and AMD-based Alienware Aurora PCs taken straight from the official site:

• The upgrade from the Comet Lake to Rocket Lake is clearly emphasized through the advancement from the R11 to the R12 lineups, whereas the systems featuring new Ryzen 5000 CPUs keep the same R10 moniker that was assigned to previous Ryzen 3000 systems.
• No mention of PCIe 4.0 support on the AMD systems, and Alienware’s product descriptions are suggesting that only the Intel systems come equipped with an 80 Plus Gold rated PSU.
• Landing pages for the AMD-based Ryzen 5000 models appear to support half as much RAM as the Intel systems and only up to an RTX 3080 GPU. In reality, the AMD systems can support 128 GB of DDR4-3400 RAM and up to an RTX 3090 GPU, but one needs to click “Buy Yours” in order to see all the available options.
• Alienware offers DDR4-3400 for the Intel systems, but only DDR4-3200 for AMD ones, even if these support DDR4-3600.
• The top AMD configurations offer only single-channel RAM, whereas all Intel systems get dual-channel RAM.
• Intel advertising verbiage is constantly updated every time a new CPU generation is launched and the systems are described as “gaming desktops.” AMD’s descriptions have been unchanged since 2019 and the Ryzen systems are not presented as gaming machines.

Could all this be Alienware’s incompetence, or is Intel somehow involved in these practices? The truth is out there, somewhere.

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