Advanced Micro Devices managed to outsell Intel Corp. in the U.S. retail in September, according to market research firm Current Analysis. The company especially notes that the success of AMD was conditioned  by sensationally good sales of a media center PC by HP.

“This is a perfect example of being at the right place at the right time. AMD’s sizeable win in September can be attributed to a myriad of factors, one of the most impressive was being able to capitalize on the success of the most popular Media Center PC and find the consumer’s ‘sweet spot’ on multiple product and pricing levels,” sais Toni Duboise, senior analyst of desktop PCs at Current Analysis.

AMD was facing an insurmountable decline in desktop sales during the first six months of 2005, but in September the company captured 52% of U.S. retail desktop sales in the. The company’s performance during the all-important back-to-school shopping season topped chip giant Intel’s 46% share by six points. Despite its past successes in surpassing Intel desktop sales in select retail sales weeks, September 2005 marked the first time AMD was able to outperform Intel for an entire month, Current Analysis notes.

According to the market research firm, directly contributing to AMD’s success was the rise in popularity of Media Center PCs. In September, Media Center PCs accounted for 46% of all U.S. retail desktop sales. Of those sales, 55% included an AMD processor. The star system of the Media Center movement and AMD’s success was the HP Pavilion a1130n, which is based on AMD Athlon 64 processor, 1GB of memory and runs  Microsoft’s Media Center operating system. Because of a post-rebate price of $679 the HP Pavilion a1130n has become the best selling Media Center PC in retail to date.