Toshiba is joining a groundswell of vendors who are moving to AMD at the expense of Intel. The move comes at an embarrassing time for Intel as they are currently trying to pump up their notebook processor sales.

Toshiba has joined Dell in cutting their exclusive ties with Intel. Instead several mainstream vendors like Toshiba and Dell are moving to AMD notebook processors claiming that they deliver equal or better performance while also allowing them to deliver better pricing for business and consumers.

Toshiba, the world’s fourth-largest laptop PC maker, said that it expects to put AMD processors in about 20 percent of the notebooks it sells.

The move follows an announcement last year by Dell, the world’s second-largest PC maker which had been procuring microprocessors only from Intel for more than two decades, that it would begin using chips from AMD. The move will start to hurt Intel as several other vendors such as Acer are set to move to the AMD platform.

“With PCs becoming commodity products, there seems to be a new way of thinking that competition should be introduced even in procurement of such core parts like processors as long as there are no major differences in product specifications,” Macquarie Securities analyst Yoshihiro Shimada said.

“This could be a message that an era in which Intel took the lion’s share of microprocessor profits as the king of PC chips is over.” Toshiba plans to put AMD chips in moderate-priced standard models for individual and corporate clients, Toshiba spokeswoman Yuko Sugahara said.

The Nikkei business daily reported earlier that prices of AMD-equipped PCs are expected to sell for up to 10,000 yen ($82) less than comparable models. Toshiba will install AMD chips in some models to be released this summer, enabling it to reduce parts-procurement costs by at least 10 percent, the paper said.

Shares of Toshiba were up 1.0 percent at 906 yen in early afternoon trade, outperforming the Tokyo stock market’s electrical machinery index which gained 0.37 percent.