Intel Viiv vs. AMD LIVE!

Searching4Sasquatch writes "Hot Hardware has tested two nearly identical HP systems in an effort to determine the best solution between Intel's Viiv and AMD's LIVE! campaigns. Priced around $999, these general purpose systems are tested straight out of the box with no tweaking or refinement to illustrate how "Joe Consumer" would fare in using one of these platforms."

Comments

pre-load software crap

[networkBoy]

It's all about the pre-loaded crap. I've wiped and re-installed systems without the pre-installed crap and they are at least 10% faster than factory builds.
-nB

Re:pre-load software crap

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

And that's the WHOLE POINT, Network Boy. Joe Consumer doesn't have your l33t hax0r skilz, so he brings it home and turns it on and expects things to work.

Re:pre-load software crap

[alisson]

And would have a conniption over buying and re-installing an operating system. That's yet another reason office, or at lease some halfway decent word processor should come with windows. Look at Apple; Appleworks comes with it. It's not great, but certainly better than word-pad/text-edit. You can then upgrade to pages/keynote, if you have those needs.

Re:pre-load software crap

[dal20402]

Not true anymore. Now, you get trial versions of all of Pages, Keynote, and MS Office, and no AppleWorks (which never made the transition to Intel). I suppose trial versions are OK, in that Joe Consumer can follow easy instructions to pay more to unlock them, but I agree a consumer machine ought to have word processing -- probably the #2 consumer application for PCs after the series of tubes -- out of the box.

On a Mac, TextEdit is a surprisingly fast and capable little word processor for stuff like letters, grade-school papers, etc. that might be written in Joe Consumer's household. I'm a power user, and, honestly, the only time I exceed the capabilities of TextEdit in word processing is when I'm doing academic writing or some kind of page-layout-ish stuff. The interface is rather reminiscent, in a good way, of MacWrite in 1984. TextEdit is way more capable as a basic word processor than it is as a text editor.

Of course, we could always suggest that non-Mac consumer machines really ought to come with the default install of Ubuntu, which has OO.o installed... /ducks

Re:pre-load software crap

[Anonymous Coward]

and why wouldn't you think that these OEM's would have an interest in their systems performing better for Joe Consumer?

I just don't understand this - nobody is asking for slower, less reliable systems yet that is exactly what all the crapware that OEM's install on their systems provide! This isn't restricted to HP; Dell and Gateway do the same damned thing. Worse yet, uninstalling any of this crap is never an option when you call about poorly performing, crashing systems, noooo, the first thing they make you do is restore the system to reinstall all that shit! Yet, time and time again, I have increased performance and reliability by uninstalling virtually everything that doesn't come with a default Windows install (except drivers - in most cases whatever the OEM provides works better than what Windows would install).

Re:pre-load software crap

[bberens]

Microsoft Works is one of the affore-mentioned applications installed by the OEMs. Not all of them do, but most PCs categorized as 'Home/Personal' come with it in my experience.

Re:pre-load software crap

[shaitand]

Can anyone explain to me the reasonable justification for making the file formats used by works and word/excel incompatible? To this day works can't open word docs and word can't open works. If someone starts using works and later finds they need word they effectively lose all their data.

Re:pre-load software crap

[alisson]

Heh, I haven't gotten my hands on an intel-mac... something about being very poor.

And yes, I do like text edit! Oddly enough, I use all three(text edit, pages, and appleworks) on a regular basis.

Re:pre-load software crap

[dal20402]

I feel like getting flamed for elitism today...

Sadly, this is the sort of business decision that occurs when you are mainly selling to the uninformed. Since they don't know any better, they won't get upset with a vendor who reduces system performance by 15% or even 30% through crapware installs... if they know anything, it's hardware specs, which don't change after crapware is installed.

Thus, it's more cost-effective for the vendor to generate revenue from crapware vendors for installing the stuff than it is to try to sell machines that perform better than the competition because there is no crapware.

Of course, this effect is exaggerated because almost all consumers who would actually be knowledgeable enough to avoid crapware won't buy from big OEMs anyway... they'd rather customize more, pay lower prices, get higher-quality components, install different OSes, or some combination of all of the above. Thus they will build their own systems, buy from small specialized vendors, or (in some nutball cases such as yours truly) buy Macs.

Re:pre-load software crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I have increased performance on these kinds of machines by using linux :)

Re:pre-load software crap

[Technician]

Of course, we could always suggest that non-Mac consumer machines really ought to come with the default install of Ubuntu, which has OO.o installed... /ducks

Actualy it is a pretty good suggestion. After dealing with a machine loaded with crippleware and nagware and expired trialware, having a box that works is great.

Primary applications include;
1 Internet Firefox!
2 Email Evolution
3 Office suite Open Office
4 Photo editing Gimp!
5 CD burning including iso files work out of the box.

Now look at the offerings on a typical Windows box
1 IE
2 Outlook Express
3 Notepad or Wordpad No spread sheet, or presentation software
4 Maybe some 30 day trial software heavly hinting at online printing services
5 Limited function trial version of something or other. usualy won't burn an iso or create a bootable CD.

Out of the box, a Ubuntu install is basicly ready to go to work with the exception of the need to install some non-Open Source codecs for media formats and flash.

Re:pre-load software crap

[Mattsson]

Of course, we could always suggest that non-Mac consumer machines really ought to come with the default install of Ubuntu, which has OO.o installed...

I would suggest OSX-machines to come with OpenOffice pre-installed, too.
Better to have a real office-suite installed than just a wordprocessor-capable text-editor.
It would also do wonders for introducing people to OpenOffice as an MS-Office alternative, having a major-brand system-provider pre-install it.
Since most other are sitting in MS knee, Apple seem to be the one most likely to actually pre-install OO.
But on the other hand, they seem have almost as big issues with non-Apple stuff as MS have with non-MS stuff.

Re:pre-load software crap

[dal20402]

The trouble is that no variant of OpenOffice for Mac is remotely Mac-like.

OO.o for Mac requires the use of X11 -- resulting in a completely different interface from any Mac application.

The Aqua port, NeoOffice, at least stays within the Aqua environment, but it is the most un-Mac-like application I have installed on my machines. Its toolbars look straight out of Windows 2000 (complete with close box on the right). It reinvents the wheel for dialog boxes, not using the Mac's built-in resources. And it has some serious speed issues to boot.

NeoOffice works more or less OK, and it's a great tool to have hanging around, but there's no way Apple -- the company that is thankfully concerned with little details, which is the reason most Mac users bother with it -- should ever bundle it with its systems. If someone had the time and resources to create and maintain a fully Mac-like version with Cocoa, that might be different, but it would be a Herculean undertaking, because the interface would have to significantly change, and because it would have to be redone in a different language.

Re:pre-load software crap

[MCraigW]

There is a Converter

FTFA

[mastershake_phd]

FTFA:

Without question, the process of choosing a standard, pre-built PC or building one yourself has become almost trivial over the last few years. Given the caliber of hardware on the market, even with just a little bit of knowledge, it is difficult to purchase a system today which would not be suitable for nearly any standard application.

Sure off the shelf systems are will do what you need, its about bang for your buck.

Re:FTFA

[TheRealMindChild]

It has been quite a while since you have been able to piece together a system for cheaper than a prebuilt one.

Re:FTFA

[Seumas]

Exactly. Only the total opposite of what you just said.

Seriously, building your own system to your precise spec and under your complete control with OEM parts will get you a far superior system to anything you can waste your money on from some douchebag pre-built company. I keep checking them out in case things change, but in almost twenty years, I have still never found any cause to buy a pre-built system unless it was a laptop.

Re:FTFA

[CastrTroy]

I think it will still be a while before I'll be able to get a prebuilt system that has exactly what I'm looking for. I've got "prebuilt" systems before with exactly what I wanted, but it is usually just from small retailers, who let you pick anything from their catalog and they will assemble it for you. I was shopping for a computer last year, and couldn't find what I was looking for with any of the major retailers, so I took this route.

Re:FTFA

[zippthorne]

Where do you get OEM parts in retail quantities?

Re:FTFA

[Seumas]

You mean one at a time? You can get single OEM parts everywhere. If you have a non-chain computer store in your town (like Enu, in Portland) you can usually get them there. Or via newegg. Or through outlets on pricewatch.

Not every part is going to be available as an OEM, but it's certainly possible to get drives, RAM, CPUs, video cards and audio cards. Not to mention, you simply don't get exactly what you want from a pre-built. I put my latest system into a rather awesome Cooler Master 832 chassis. Granted, it was pretty expensive, but at least I had the option instead of going with whatever plastic piece of crap Dell decided was good for me.

Now, if you are just looking for a simple home office PC for your mom to use for the web, MP3s, solitaire and spreadsheets, then going with a pre-built is potentially a good solution since that takes the trouble of having to provide support out of your hands. But for anything specific like server hardware or gaming rigs, I would be hard pressed to buy something prebuilt.

I have often considered a good Falcon Northwest rig, but as great as they are I just can't justify spending $5,000 for something I can build myself for around $3,000 or less.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you pay for windows.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on what kind of components you want. If you want a machine for home office use, the kind of thing with integrated graphics and audio, for example, sure. The companies that build them get big discounts on the lower-range parts they buy in bulk, and they take very small margins. The cost of assembly, plus the profit they take, frequently is less than the discounts they received on the parts. If I was in the market for an office-use kind of machine, I would certainly consider something like the Dell Dimension series. (Well, maybe not Dell, I'd probably personally pick a smaller company, but it's a good example.)

However, for higher-end machines, that's just not the case at all. Take a look at the Dell XPS series. Go ahead and customize one, and look at how certain changes affect the price. There's the CPU, where switching from a 6300 to a 6400 costs an extra $50, but on Newegg there's only a $30 difference. Adding an extra GB of DDR2 667 RAM costs $130, when on Newegg you can get faster memory for $100. ven the cost of the DVD burner is questionable. From what I've seen, this is pretty representative of other builders, though I do know of at least a few that are much better than Dell. You get a deal on relatively low-quality components, sure. But if you want to, say, play modern games...you'd be ripping yourself off.

Re:FTFA

[Joe The Dragon]

The prebuilt ones may cost less but you can piece together a system with better parts for a little bit more.

Re:FTFA

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Sorry but that's completely wrong - at least in the UK. For several years now it's been possible for a shrewd buyer of pre-made systems to get a much better deal than buying the components separately. Sure, if you just buy the first PC you see an advert for you may get a peice of overpriced crap. But take a look around and there are some damn good deals to be had. Maybe you could get cheaper parts if you really take the time to look around second-hand stores and ebay etc. But that adds so much time and additional risk of failed parts that it's not usually worth it, not to mention the extra costs of actually travelling around to second-hand places to look for parts and the cost of p&p on ebay.

To put it in perspective I bought my current PC five years ago for £800. To buy the same components through the cheapest channels I could find first-hand it would've cost well over £1k.

Re:FTFA

[scalla]

The truth is that it has been quite a while (never I think) since you could buy a "comparable" pre-built system for the same price as building one yourself. When I built my last Athlon box, a couple years ago, a high end gaming rig from Dell was twice as expensive and I had no control over quality of memory, mobo etc... Something from Alienware that really was comparable was like 3 times as much. Its not for everyone but rolling your own provides the biggest bang for the buck by far

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely not true today. Even at the very low end (£160) it is just about possible to build a cheaper system, although the difference is only pounds if you go for decent parts. When you get to around £200 with machines that include Windows it can be slightly the other way - but £3 or £5 difference is not really that massive. In about the middle (£600, including windows) it is can be up to £60 cheaper to build your own, and the specification can be slightly higher. So me a system with a AMD X2 3800 (Socket AM2), 2GB RAM, a Asus mobo, 320gb seagate hdd, and geforce 7600 premade for under £550 and then I might believe you. (And yes, you can build a quality system for that price, excluding monitor). And this will perform fantastically.

Re:FTFA

[Kjella]

No problem doing that. Now, pieceing together a system and making minimum wage after taxes? No way. There's always some odd kind of connector or new screws or your power supply is blocking your CPU fan or your HDD cables are the wrong length or whatnot. You don't do it nearly often enough and usually end up spending most of the evening doing it. The only reason I built my last machine was that it was a half-upgrade, if my computer spontaniously combusted I'd get a prebuilt one in a heartbeat.

Re:FTFA

[Znork]

"shrewd buyer of pre-made systems to get a much better deal"

Take a look around for the cheapest-ass components you can find (the ones you wouldnt actually buy), and you'll find you get about the same price as Dell prebuilts. And they often appear to use those same cheap-ass components in their low-end systems (in fact, look at the low end pre-made systems and often you'll find they include components that arent even sold as parts anymore (motherboards without Gbit lan? Are they buying up RMA returns?)).

I dont really call that a good deal. A cheap deal perhaps, but you're not getting best price/performance, nor are you getting quality parts.

Then you start adding up the actual real benefits of building your own systems; standardized formats, easy upgrades, and if you keep architectures down, you can easily move parts around so upgrading your game machine lets your server inherit the CPU, your wifes desktop inherits the GFX card, etc, so every upgrade becomes a cascade improvement that pays several times the value invested. Further, once you have a few machines you no longer have to invest in new cases when you need a new PC. Then go even further, consolidate storage, and use diskless clients PXE booting off iSCSI (well, ok, some of us may be going a bit far, but you get the point...), and you can cut costs of a new desktop down to motherboard, CPU and RAM. At that point, it's not even a contest anymore.

If you buy a new PC every five years tho, I'd have to agree, you're probably better off getting a Dell and throwing it in the trash when you get the next one. But hey, this is Slashdot, and there may actually be a nerd or two here for whom the economics look a bit different.

Re:FTFA

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Yeah the cheapest PCs use the cheapest parts, of course. But I'm saying that for the most part you can get as good or better pricing at just about any point along the scale. I don't know what Dell do, maybe they cheap out every place they can, personally the pre-made systems I'm talking about are from the smaller companies.

I don't see how upgrading is any different for pre-built vs. self-built. Obviously you should check out the upgradeability of a system in either case, if you fail to do so it's your own fault, not the PC manufacturer's.

Whether you buy a whole PC and don't make any major upgrades - instead opting for a whole new system 6 years down the line, or continuously upgrade every component over and over, you still end up with the same amount of waste at the end. There's very little in a PC these days that doesn't need to be upgraded eventually. Cases don't, but then again if you want to sell or make use of your old equipment it's going to need a case anyway. The "cascade" happens as it does with component-upgrading, just in starts and stops instead of a more constant flow (plus there's no worrying about hardware compatability issues and architecture/format takes care of itself).

The pre-built being cheaper than self-built only applies when all/virtually all components need upgrading. Obviously if one component fails or for whatever reason becomes outdated before anything else then you just upgrade it. No point paying for a whole new system and making a lot of good hardware redundant unnecessarily. My point is that generally upgrades take place as additions (ie. DIMMs, HDDs), not replacements, so it's just as easy to add to a new system until the fundamental components become dated (ie. CPU/motherboard, GPU) and then buy a whole new system, moving over any relevant additional components at the same time. The the older PC is passed down or sold off. For example my two previous PCs are now Linux and BSD boxes. All PCs running off a single KVM of course - a few redundant keyboards and mice are perhaps the only excess of buying pre-built that I could've otherwise avoided.

Re:FTFA

[JackMeyhoff]

Capicators all come from the same place, remember the fiasco with leaky caps, these where in top end overpriced high spec boards aswell as the budget ones. Just because you get a so called top notch brand doesnt mean you get top notch components as they will ALWYAS keep reducing their BOM's (Bill Of Materials) by any means possible. You are paying for a BRAND just like your clothing, just like your razor blades, just like your hair products. All those fancy brands you pay 10x for in the fanshion stores, all come from the same factories, I have seen the SAME clothes with different labels, from the same factory. Wildly different prices. The same goes for tech.

Re:FTFA

[AK Marc]

Exactly. Only the total opposite of what you just said.

For about the price of the case and power supply that I'd spec out for myself, I can pick up an entire computer with monitor and probably a printer at any number of stores. Yes, for less than $400, you can get a decent computer with monitor and printer. I couldn't bring myself to build anything for that little. Anything I'd spec out for myself would cost about $1500 at the cheapest up to about $5000 (not counting any exotic hardware that is out there). So yes, prebuilts are much cheaper than what you can build yourself. That you don't like the quality doesn't make it untrue.

Re:FTFA

[evilviper]

Take a look around for the cheapest-ass components you can find (the ones you wouldnt actually buy), and you'll find you get about the same price as Dell prebuilts. And they often appear to use those same cheap-ass components in their low-end systems

The major difference being, when you buy a system from Dell or HP, you'll probably find features missing from those cheap-ass components. For example, it's pretty common to find your low-end HP/Dell motherboards lacking an AGP slot.

Re:FTFA

[evilviper]

Capicators all come from the same place

Not really true. There are a few different big Caps manufacturers to choose between.

You are paying for a BRAND just like your clothing, just like your razor blades, just like your hair products.

Definately not true for computer components. There's a reason the high-end brands like Asus and Gigabyte give you 3year warranties, and crap like PcChips, Ecs and others give you practically nothing. Even when they do offer warranties, they try to weasel out of it, making it as hard as possible to get service, with stupid requirements.

I've occasionally seen some stupid design decisions and corner cutting from the more expensive manufacturers, but I've never seen high-quality from the cheap-crap manufacturers. Longer warranties, if nothing else, significantly reduce the amount of profit to be made by cutting corners, as they'll have to pay for it later.

Re:FTFA

[evilviper]

For about the price of the case and power supply that I'd spec out for myself, I can pick up an entire computer with monitor and probably a printer at any number of stores.

Well then you must be absolutely HORRIBLE at shopping for components.

Your numbers don't even make sense, unless you have unbelievably high standards when shopping for components, and ridiculously low standards when buying a pre-built system.

Provide a link for a system, and I can easily link to cheaper (and probably bette) components.

CRT monitors are probably the only exception, as shipping is so high that buying an over-priced model in a retail store often still puts you ahead. Of course, even in those cases, a bit of online comparison and patience can yield extremely good deals.

Re:FTFA

[Seumas]

I can't speak for what it's like in the UK. But I can tell you that if you're comfortable with building your own machine, there's no reason not to. Even if it was cheaper to buy a pre-built than components, it wouldn't be worth it unless the pre-built was significantly cheaper.

I built at least one new top of the line machine every eight to twelve months and have done so for the last decade and I've been building my own machines since... well, forever. The last pre-built I owned was a VIC-20 when I was seven years old, in 1984.

When you buy a pre-built, you are almost always also paying for things like support contracts and bundled software. When you build it yourself, you get exactly what you want the way you want it and nothing else. Further, unless you're buying your parts from retail stores like CompUSA and Best Buy, you're going to have a very difficult time finding a pre-built that is even in the same ball-park as a home-built. (In the United States, at least).

There's nothing wrong with buying a pre-built as long as you know what you're getting yourself into and exactly why you're buying it. But if you think you're getting a deal by not building it yourself, I'd suggest double-checking the numbers.

And really, if nothing else, look at the time involved. I can run out and pick up the parts, go home, build the machine and install my OS and be running smoothly before whatever company I've bought my overpriced pre-built with discount parts from even gets the shipping order to UPS.

Aside from that, I don't even know that you could find a pre-built with my specific configuration that I just built a couple weeks ago to replace last year's machine.

Re:FTFA

[Seumas]

You're not even making sense. Of course you can buy a crappy low-end pre-built or build a high end and more expensive machine. What does that have to do with anything? Why are you comparing apples to moon rocks?! My current system ran me around $2,000 and I guarantee you would be hard pressed to find the same system.

So yes, prebuilts are much cheaper than what you can build yourself, as long as you don't care about quality, performance, functionality, features or capability. Was that not already obvious to all of us?

Re:FTFA

[AK Marc]

My current system ran me around $2,000 and I guarantee you would be hard pressed to find the same system.

That's the point. I would pay more in shipping to buy every component in a pre-built than the cheapest from Dell. They aren't comperable, but they are cheaper than you can do it yourself. Everone that says they build cheaper are either talking about that which can't be bought (like you) or the guy that claims that he is "building" a system reusing his HD, case, PS, etc. Try this, go to Dell. Find something on the cheap side, no more than $500. Then, try to price building it out yourself. Let me know how that exercise comes out.

So yes, prebuilts are much cheaper than what you can build yourself, as long as you don't care about quality, performance, functionality, features or capability. Was that not already obvious to all of us?

If it is so obvious, then why are so many people talking about the *price* of a self built being good? It's good for one and only one reason, selected components. A high-quality PS and MB fix most lock-up problems people have. I've never had a more stable computer than the ones I build for myself. But they cost more. The person I was replying to implied that he builds computers for less than pre-builds. If it is so obvious, why did I have to correct him? If it is so obvious, why do you feel the need to correct me?

Re:FTFA

[aslate]

£180 about 6-9 months ago:
Pentium 4 HT 3.4Ghz
1GB RAM
400GB HDD
Radeon X700 Pro 128MB
Wifi, Digital TV Tuner, DL DVD-RW

There are bargains to be had!

Re:FTFA

[rtb61]

Like for the typical user, next day at home warranty replacement (if you can effectively describe your problem) for a year, or even three years (oddly enough it's cheaper if you let them talk you into it).

The alternate is tracking down warranties for individual products with return to manufacturer (in some backwater province in china) requirements. It wasn't to bad when there were a lot of high quality manufacturers of components and you could avoid low or questionable quality, but with extensive ODM and contract manufacturing you often can't tell where your product is coming from till after you get it (or how reliable it will be).

In the end I cut down upgrading to every two years or so and unlike earlier times where I might have retained some components lately they have been complete replacements (although change of use of notebooks did occur, high performance notebooks just cook themselves).

Re:FTFA

[WuphonsReach]

It has been quite a while since you have been able to piece together a system for cheaper than a prebuilt one.

As always (even in the old days) the answer is: Maybe

Can you build a cheap box for less then a low-end Dell? Most likely not.

Can you build a mid-level system that will run match what Dell (or other prebuilt's) offer for less? Definitely. For us, the cost savings was around $300/machine.

Even better, that mid-level system uses all commodity parts. So when the motherboard dies, you don't have to throw out a proprietary PSU (which Dell used to use) along with a proprietary case. You can get replacement parts from just about anywhere, without spending time on the phone trying to get warranty support. You may even choose to have a few spare parts sitting in the closet for quicker recovery from system downtime.

(By mid-level, I'm talking dual-core, 64bit, 2GB RAM, (2) hard drives in RAID1 with integrated video and an nForce chipset. With a decent case, PSU and DVD-writer.)

Printer-friendly version

[Mikachu]

All on one page.

http://www.hothardware.com/printarticle.aspx?artic leid=939

Re:Printer-friendly version

[gEvil (beta)]

Hot Hardware doesn't allow linking to the printable version, which you would have known had you checked your link before posting.

Re:Printer-friendly version

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Works for me.

Perhaps it is because of refcontrol.

Re:Printer-friendly version

[gEvil (beta)]

That would certainly change the situation a bit. Thanks for the link.

Re:Printer-friendly version

[JavaRob]

BTW, if you have the WebDeveloper plugin installed (pretty darn useful) it also lets you disable the referer (in the "Disable" menu). You can also turn of JavaScript temporarily, enable auto-completion when it's disabled, and oh so much more.

These Solutions Really Aren't Being Marketed Well

[Apple Acolyte]

I don't think these multimedia solutions are being marketed very well by either Intel or AMD. I have heard of Viiv for quite a while, but while I have seen the name in various places, I have only ever seen vague descriptions of its capabilities. As for LIVE!, it must be really new or really obscure - this is the first time I have seen that name. Perhaps the OEMs aren't getting the point across.

AMD already has the marketing in their pocket

[Umbrel]

Or rather, Intel give it to them... at the moment they called their platform Viiv :-/
That must be the worst product name in history along with Nintendo's Wii (great console but what was smoking the guy who named it)

Re:AMD already has the marketing in their pocket

[SlashdotCrackPot]

(great console but what was smoking the guy who named it) Maybe the intern under the desk?

Re:AMD already has the marketing in their pocket

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wheee this is fun."

This message brought to you by the word "crucible",
for all your experimental smelting needs that's "crucible."

Re:AMD already has the marketing in their pocket

[Pollardito]

Nintendo's Wii (great console but what was smoking the guy who named it) dunno, but it sounds like you suspect it was from Soviet Russia?

Re:AMD already has the marketing in their pocket

[Kazrael]

Actually, the simple fact that you pointed out the Wii implies that this marketing tactic has worked. What a cheap way to generate interest than having geeks across the world fighting how to pronounce it if they read it, how to spell it if they hear it, and how dumb of a name it is in general. You may think it is dumb, but I guarantee that was a great choice of a name for the console.

Re:AMD already has the marketing in their pocket

[lajoyce]

Nintendo's Wii (great console but what was smoking the guy who named it) Wiid!

Re:AMD already has the marketing in their pocket

[Rocketship Underpant]

"That must be the worst product name in history along with Nintendo's Wii..."

How so? "Wii" is dumb because it sounds like a childish toilet word in English, as well as a silly exclamation.

"Viiv", aside from the goofy spelling, is just "vive", the French word for "live". I don't see how that's worse than AMD's Live, and it might be better since they don't insist on all-caps with an exclamation point. (How I loath grammatical punctuation in names.)

Quick summary

[Chainsaw]

Intel Viiv: A multimedia solution.
AMD LIVE!: A MULTIMEDIA SOLUTION WITH A BROKEN CAPS LOCK ROFL LOL!!!!1!!one!

And to get around the lameness filter (please ignore) - I fear hedgehogs. The little bastards are everywhere, just waiting to kill med as soon as I set foot outside of the basement that my mother locks me in every evening.

Re:Quick summary

[Anonymous Coward]

That post should have stayed behind the lameness filter :-(

Re:Quick summary

[Criffer]

Instead of posting offtopic crud to get around the lameness filter, have you considered the possibility that it was actually working correctly?

Re:Quick summary

[QBasicer]

You're my new hero. Hedgehogs? Brilliant! Does it really matter overall? Most people either sit in the AMD camp, or the Intel camp. Or at least from my personal experience.

Re:Quick summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Alas, but clearly it is not.

AMD system comes with better on board video

[Joe The Dragon]

GeForce 6150LE is lot better then gma 950 but for $999 you should get a real video card.

Re:AMD system comes with better on board video

[Sandbags]

Agreed, For $1000, not getting a dedicated graphic processor is lame. More over, it doesn't have gigabit networking, fiber audio connector, HDMI or DVI, so what the hell use is it as a media center. I can't even connect it to my HD setup!

Re:AMD system comes with better on board video

[default luser]

Yup, this is the downside of the whole Media PC thing - someone comes up with a spec, and you know manufacturers are just going to abuse it. Two GB of ram, on a system that can't play games well, and sits in your livingroom? What a waste!

Back when I heard about this spec, I was interested because I thought it might force manufacturers to bundle a decent video chip in the under $1000 range - but then I read the spec, saw nothing about minimum video requirements, and promptly ignored it as the marketing gimmick it was.

So yes, your $1000 PC has a chipset designed for $500 PCs (Fast Ethernet, crappy integrated graphics), and manufacturers are rolling in the dough, because the extra memory is cheaper than a video card. About the only good thing you can say is: it comes with a PCIe 16x slot. But then, so does almost EVERY PC these days, even the $400 ones.

A somewhat related topic, I wanted to mention it:

The only reason the G965 graphics outperforms the 6150 is because of the Core2 Duo processor. Most people don't realize this, but the uber-powerful GMA X3000 is actually running without hardware vertex shaders for the moment. Hardware vertex shader drivers have been promised for the last 6 months, with no end in sight. This is actually the reason for many game compatibility problems with the X3000 (and low performance), because very few games offer a software vertex processing path.

So, this 8-pipe monster only gets slightly better performance than a pathetic 2-pipe IGP from Nvidia, and it only manages that because of the incredible power of the Core 2. People have also seen marked performance increases using Core2 Duos with 850-series IGPs, for the same reason. Of course, this will backfire once game designers start using the second core for AI/physics, so Intel needs to release those drivers eventually.

Summary

[bogie]

The AMD system was cheaper, performed better overall and had a more complex set of qualifications in order to receive the "AMD Live" certification. Yawn, this really was not a very interesting comparison. Anyway CableCards, DRM, and cheap cable company DVR's that have room to grow are going to be the death of HTPC's so I wouldn't go spending a bucket load of cash on one right now.

Re:Summary

[msobkow]

The article was a rather long read with very little useful information in the end. The differences highlighted had far more to do with the video subsystem employed by the boxen than it did with CPU, memory, or any other factors that differed between the systems. Despite being "latest generation" hardware, some of the tests would not even run.

Thumbs down on both for promoting "multimedia" PC capabilities without handling video cadence properly.

Re:Summary

[Umbrel]

Agree, besides they call AMD the winner because the specs are tighter just to go ahead a said than you can get a better Intel system if you don't restrict to the minimun Viiv ask...
So basically their are saying Intel can do better if you paid more... that is not an impresive review.
AMD had better performance/price ratio though.

AMD/Microsoft Marketing Comparison

[Prien715]

Is it just me or do AMD/MS get together and do marketing?

Windows XP / Athlon XP
Athlon 64 / Windows XP 64 (to be fair, Alpha/Itanium were 64 bit chips but Windows never sported the name....)

The newest thing now? Live mail and Live search from Microsoft. So what's AMD gonna call their stuff? AMD Live! That's right kids.

Re:AMD/Microsoft Marketing Comparison

[stratjakt]

AMD simply capitalizes on the marketting microsoft does - and hardly do any of their own. This is nothing new. People attach a buzzword that someone else worked to make popular to their products all the time, think "XTreme".

Your average schmo just sees "Athlon XP" on the card at best buy, and thinks it "runs windows better". It's smart marketing on AMD's part.

Re:AMD/Microsoft Marketing Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or do AMD/MS get together and do marketing?

It's just you.

Windows XP / Athlon XP

The Athlon XP name was chosen precisely to ride on the coattails of Windows XP, positioning the Athlon as the "best" processor for running Windows XP. (Of course, this was so much marketing bullcrap--the non-XP Athlon was just fine--but it's like naming your product PowerDVD XP.)

Athlon 64 / Windows XP 64 (to be fair, Alpha/Itanium were 64 bit chips but Windows never sported the name....)

The actual Windows product was Windows XP x64. Neither AMD nor Intel used the x64 moniker for their 64-bit extensions (x86-64 and EM64T, respectively); it's Microsoft's marketing invention.

The newest thing now? Live mail and Live search from Microsoft. So what's AMD gonna call their stuff? AMD Live! That's right kids. AMD LIVE! was a direct response to Intel's Viiv, announced years ago, so I very much doubt they're directly connected. And why don't you go back to the SB Live! to start accusing companies of colluding in their marketing?

Re:AMD/Microsoft Marketing Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

VI IV in good old Roman Numerals = 6 4

Have you heard of the Intel 64 chip? Well you have now!

Simple

Gaming vs Real Work

[hcmtnbiker]

That's what it comes down to between these two systems really. With the money saved on the AMD Live they got a better graphics card (Much better then the integrated on the Intel box).

Gaming: AMD -> money saved == more money to GFX
Real Work: Intel -> dual core == more efficient at multi-threaded tasks

I'm curious as to what a comparison with a AMD x64 Dual-Core would be though with embeded GFX, that would be much closer to comparing apples to apples.

Re:Gaming vs Real Work

[Umbrel]

Isn't this platforms supposed to be home theather... my point being it's ok if they are closer to gaming than to "real work".
I just don't get what you are trying to point out.

Re:Gaming vs Real Work

[drinkypoo]

Except they're both Dual Core systems. It's the AMD Athlon 64 X2.

Re:Gaming vs Real Work

[hattig]

The fact is the Intel platform exhibited rendering errors, and didn't even run some games. This is despite being on their recent G965 chipset. It also had poor image quality (although the nVidia chipset didn't do that much better, AMD do have the ATI chipsets which get very good scores in HQV) and Intel really should be chastised for selling a media brand with such abysmal performance. It was also $100 cheaper - you can get a fairly decent graphics card for that money, or a CPU upgrade to make up for the slightly faster C2D.

Both systems were using dual core chips.

It is a shame that they didn't use a noise meter at any time, or discuss power consumption, or mention the fact that their requirements for LIVE! had "Vista" whilst the HP system ran XP MCE.

I don't think anyone would want that computer near their home cinema system either.

Intel Obviously Better

[R3d M3rcury]

They tested an HP Pavilion 1630n (AMD) versus an HP Pavilion 1640n (Intel). It's obvious to me that the Intel, therefore, is TEN better than the AMD.

Re:Intel Obviously Better

[Anonymous Coward]

check your math

1640n-1630n = ???

Re:Intel Obviously Better

[rynoski]

10?

ummm not. in this case anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amd has been using the Live! label almost as long as Intel's Viiv, which is by my very bad memory (please correct me) about a couple years now. Maybe MS had the Live search beta up back then but not this Live everything they have going now.

No contest on the Athlon XP though :)

Hardware firewall on the a1630n

[mlts]

The HP a1630n has one interesting feature that wasn't documented -- it has a hardware firewall due to the nVidia chipset on the built in Ethernet port, and it works pretty well, as I've not had any issues with it so far with gaming (MMOs, some RTS games) and other general use. I have read some people have had trouble with it, but so far, its been a great addition.

One side note. The AMD Live! device works with Windows XP MCE and Vista, but Windows XP Pro doesn't support it.

Re:Hardware firewall on the a1630n

[rossz]

I just put together a dual processor/dual core AMD 64 system that has that chip set. Thursday night the hardware firewall feature decided to disable all net access. It let the box get an IP address from the router, but that was it. Everything else (local network and internet) was completely blocked. I spent a couple of hours messing with it, reinstalling drivers, etc, before giving up and calling a friend that is a Windows expert (it's a dual boot system). He spent a couple of hours messing with it and walked away defeated. I ended up disabling the two built in nics in the bios and tossing in a spare generic nic I had laying around.

Re:Hardware firewall on the a1630n

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it's a hardware firewall couldn't you just switch it on/off in the BIOS setup?

Re:Hardware firewall on the a1630n

[rossz]

I couldn't find any option to do that. I could completely enable the nic, or completely disable it. Stupid, yes.

Re:Hardware firewall on the a1630n

[empaler]

I had a similar experience with my Nforce firewall. I could surf fine, but when I tried to download stuff it'd kink the executables just so that they wouldn't work. Disabled the bastard after a friend with the same chipset told me that he'd had the same issues. Has worked without problems ever since.

Clearly haven't heard of comparison shopping...

[locokamil]

... because the AMD system reviewed here is rather overpriced.

I just bought an HP m7750n with identical specs and a 5200+ processor (as opposed to 4600+ for the reviewed model) processor for $950. And that's before the mail in rebate and such. And yes, it is "Live" certified (whatever that means).

After a few aftermarket upgrades, these machines are excellent performers, although they are somewhat limited in terms of expansion oportunities. Great for reformatting and installing linux too... although I haven't come across a PC yet that isn't good for that :)

Unpronounceable

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I can't wait to watch Gigli on Viiv!

Why Wii is the better name

[remmelt]

Wii:
Your name is Willy. Your Mii's name is Wiilly! (Or anything that is Wi-, -ey, -ee, -i-, etc.)
Wiimote.
Wiibrator.
I wiish I had a Wii.
The double "i" logo possibilities.

The variations are endless. The fun never stops. Don't think this is funny? The Wii may not be for you.

Revolution:
Stupid marketing name.
It's not a revolution at all.
Trying to fit in with the "serious gamer" crowd.

(Can this post get even more off topic?)

Re:These Solutions Really Aren't Being Marketed We

[NATIK]

I can echo this, I have never heard of LIVE and I have no idea what Viiv actually does, I just don't feel it has been made clear what it does whenever I have heard about it.

Spinal Tap

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, it's not worth migrating until they can manage to make it 11 better. It's just that one extra that makes it all the better for the fans, y'know? Because otherwise you get up to 10 and then where do you go? You've just got to have that one extra to really push things over the edge. At least, that's what that pusher robot told me; I don't trust the shover robot.

Cooler Master FTW

[empaler]

I can only agree that Cooler Master gives you what you pay for - plus some nice little details you didn't expect. Silent, cold and cool. (Disclaimer: I can't remember what my tower cost, but I remember thinking it was a bargain)

You're assuming some things...

[msimm]

Most people *I* know do build their own systems for cheaper. Their's no real magic to it: not all components age evenly. My CD burner is fine, about as fast as anything else and is about 3 or more years old. When I upgrade my system I do it in stages. My main drive is a WD Raptor. It's still about as fast as anything you're going to get, so again I can save a little money until I decide to get a SATA2 drive. You see a pattern? Building a new system from scratch might cost you a little more, but I'd assume if you were willing to go this route then you'd be getting some specialized gear anyway. Because you're an enthusiast.

Building out a new system for me goes like this: mainboard, CPU/fan, memory. My graphics card gets updates as needed (I'm not playing competitive games right now so my card is already overkill, even for Vista). My case is a nice looking aluminum job by Coolmaster (blue lights, you can't go wrong with blue lights). My Matrix VCD looks good even if its a few years old. My DVD player is fine and I'll probably toss a DL DVD-R/RW (ya, I'm lazy, I have one in my Linux box for DVD backup).

Anyway, I realize I'm not saying anything groundbreaking, I just had to chime in when I read your post.

If you have the time and skill home built *is* still the way to go. For the rest there are great prices with prebuilt systems.

Re:You're assuming some things...

[AK Marc]

So, as long as you start with a free computer, buying a new computer (counting changing a case screw in the existing computer as "all new") is cheap.

But who's winning the buzzword war?

[ElForesto]

It seems that neither AMD nor Intel has done a terribly good job at telling us what exactly LIVE! or Viiv are all about. I mean, most of us know it has something to do with being a HTPC and that there should be some kind of home theater goodies on-board, but what exactly are they? I'm seriously having flashbacks to the MPC spec of 15 years ago that so many PC manufacturers and software publishers passed around without explaining what the heck it meant. Making up new branding like this is pretty much worthless to consumers. For all their flash the marketing guys can't really tell us what these symbols mean but doggonnit you can buy a bunch of items with the same pretty logo and know they'll probably work together.

Re:But who's winning the buzzword war?

[Anonymous Coward]

> It seems that neither AMD nor Intel has done a terribly good job at telling us what exactly LIVE! or Viiv are all about.

Yes!

Every time I ask somebody, it goes like this:

me: What is Viiv?
them: Well you can play videos on your PC.
me: I can already play videos on my PC without Viiv. So what does it *add*?
them: Well you can download and play music!
me: I've been doing that for two decades. What does it do for me that I can't do already?
them: You can share digital photos over the internet with your friends!
me: Just tell me what the hell it ACTUALLY IS dammit!!

Nobody seems to know.

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Priced around $999"
Why can't people just say "Priced around $1,000

Re:I don't get it

[r_jensen11]

"Priced around $999"
Why can't people just say "Priced around $1,000
Because when I read that, I see "Priced around dollar-sign nine nine nine", whereas, the other says "Priced around dollar-sign one comma zero zero zero." Clearly, the former is quicker to read than the latter.

10% faster

[HomelessInLaJolla]

That's understating. When my Compaq V2000 arrived it was absolutely fettered with junk that filled nearly 20 gigs of the HD. A smooth reinstallation--careful to update drivers and not actually run vendor installs which often dump on the crapware--had the XP install to around 2 gigs and system performance was much more responsive. Not that the responsiveness of the XP install was the main point. The main point was to take back the HD space for LFS and Debian.

Re:10% faster

[Khyber]

I apologize for the extra crapware. Honestly, I do. When I fix laptops I have no choice but to load it all on since they're basically imaged drives with all the crapware and bloatware installed. Were I allowed to do things my way, I'd have the place that I work at purchase a clean VLK of XP (while they still exist!) and use those to image the drives with their specific drivers. No bloatware, and maybe add in some free stuff like Celestia, or Google Earth, just to allow the new user of this 'new' computer to enjoy it a bit more with some interesting things, and things would be faster, more efficient, etc. Hell, do you know the kind of stress we put on a multi-gigabit fiber-optic network with those 20 gig image installs, with upwards of maybe just 90 computers at a time undergoing the reimaging, over gigabit connections? We replace a hard drive every 45 seconds on average. The average AMD imaging takes about 45 minutes to an hour. The Intel (I don't know why, nobody will tell me,) will take three hours for the equivalent image size. I assume it's polling everything and installing proper drivers into the image on the fly, since I've heard we do have that capability. BTW, 10% is way understating it. I just redid my pal's dv2000 (The hp comparitive to your Compaq v2000) and we can easily notice a 50% gain. WoW would skip in framerate, but once we removed all the crapware, we hit speeds equivalent to my single-core AMD 64 3000+ with a 256 meg GeForce 6200. The software is that poorly written. That kinda shames me, when back in the day that I'm from we had ultra-small programs that did the damned job, out of necessity. I personally think we're getting too comfortable with all this extra technology, and as a result, bloat is just the absolute. This should be added to Moore's Law, or have a law of it's own created. As the complexity of technology increases, so does the additional bloat of the software size. I understand that perhaps without 1,000 programmers doing assembly, to create a game that small and efficient would be impossible, were it not for the demoscene. Seriously, any software developer should be looking up to this group, because what they can pull off in absolute tiny ass amounts of code is fucking impressive. Doom 3 style graphics in a demo shooter only 96k in size? Yes, they've done it. Look up kkreiger. That's the most damned efficient and compact code I've ever run in my life. There's no major developer out there right now that could offer this, and this is why we're doomed to getting more and more bloated and loaded down with crapware.

Re:10% faster

[Khyber]

Feel free to kick my ass for not selecting plain old text. Damnit, I generally do that before I start typing. Slashdot you need the ability to edit a post!!!! At least for a certain amount of time! Or maybe put in a forced-preview interval so you can proofread it quickly? It may be an annoyance but it'd stop stuff like this so the message is more clear!

no power consumption?

[valentyn]

These days, all I hear is stuff about power consumption of various electronic equipment, stand-by mode or not. Not having the power consumption in a Joe Consumer article sounds pretty useless to me.

Why?

[dreamchaser]

Why would someone take two relatively low cost media center PC's then proceed to test them using benchmarks designed to test gaming PC's? There were really only two tests that even came close to addressing the purpose of these boxen; the burning speed test and the DVD quality test.

The methodology behind this review is horrible.

Re:These Solutions Really Aren't Being Marketed We

[Anonymous Coward]

Just you wait for the Java System Live Viiv .NET Ultimate Release!

It's a dessert topping and a floor polish!

Take a flying leap.....

[blankoboy]

http://www.leapahead.com/ versus http://www.leapsbeyond.com/.

Round 1.....FIGHT!

Print-friendly Link

[jambarama]

Print-friendly link. It drives me crazy that, just to drive up page views for advertisers, webpages break their articles down into 30 parts. And I'm looking at you Tom's Hardware.

Comparison Misses the Point

[Mulva_au]

The article compares two HP servers...not a VIIV vs. Live!. VIIV and Live! is also about media and inter-media capabilities; not just processor speed. It's this kind of "benchmark" that give benchmarks a bad name. Do the research!

Time to set the record straight.

[Khyber]

When it comes to HP, when it comes down to AMD or Intel, let me say this. When comparably equipped, Joe Schmoe is NOT going to notice the difference. I have to test laptops all damned day long, and the only real spot you ever see a performance gain (plus a gain in easier repair jobs on AMD's side thanks to keeping the POST Beep Codes working, where Intel has them disabled,) is the dual-core 64-bit AMD Turion line vs the Intel Core Duo. AMD Just blows it away, even when using inferior PC2700 DDR memory (Whereas the Intel uses PC2-4200/5300 DDR2) in Windows oading times.

Now, when you put the bloatware into the equation, it gets fairly interesting. The Intel seems better at loading the bloatware. The AMD seems to lack. I suspect this is due to the lower L2 cache on the AMD cores, 256 or 512k compared to Intel's 1-2M per core.

As far as desktops go, since it's all pretty much x86 now, I suspect the performance would be the same as what I witness in the laptops. Oh, and let's not forget about graphics. And let's ignore Vista, let's use the current mainstream of XP.

MOD UP

[Khyber]

Trust me, the laptop is the only platform you're NOT getting done custom-built for cheaper than a pre-configured one. Your LCD in that for factor, for a 17", HP laptop BrightView WideScreen monitor is 389 fucking dollars. My 4:3 17" (More real-estate, BTW, FYVM WideScreen,) cost me 129. Yes, laptop users are getting screwd on price, and less real-estate on the screen. But, they do save on weight (As long as the screens aren't backed with that damned metal foil.)

Hell one stick of 1 Gig memory is like 129 bucks. Wanna upgrade to the 2.0 GHz beast your laptop can handle? 219 bucks. Same thing with better cache on a desktop? 179.

Ah well. I'm going to stop ranting. Adios.

So how noisy where they?

[dropadrop]

A review spanning several pages looking into a computer aimed at running in your living room and no mention about noise levels? You would think that being in identical cases would give a good starting point at looking at power consumption and the systems noise levels.

What's wrong with these reviewers? Are they somehow alienated from the real world or am I?

One Argument

[Khyber]

The pre-built being cheaper than self-built only applies when all/virtually all components need upgrading.

This is why I wish they'd make the bare motherboard combos again, so you had control of what you put into your system, I bet that would cut the cost of the motherboard significantly.

Except...

[Khyber]

One's 64-bit, the other is 32 bit, last I checked? If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Re:Except...

[drinkypoo]

Well, I haven't been keeping up honestly, but my understanding is that Core Duo is 32 bit and Core 2 Duo is 64 bit. All Athlon 64s, of course, are 64 bit, but you knew that because it was in the name. :) A little research suggests that Merom (Core 2) is the first mobile 64 bit intel chip, so I guess Core isn't 64 bit. But I have read that Core (Yonah) is also 64 bit, it just didn't work properly and they disabled it on Yonah and made us wait for Merom.

Slashdot modding fails again !

[Zoxed]

> > (great console but what was smoking the guy who named it)
> Maybe the intern under the desk?

Only on Slashdot does this post get modded to "Score:2, Informative" :-)

You get what you pay for

[Andy Dodd]

It is true that you can't build a system yourself for much cheaper than an average prebuilt system, the fact is that you get what you pay for. Those prebuilts often have some serious corner-cutting (nonstandard power supply, motherboard, and/or case, substandard component quality, etc). With a "do it yourself" system, you know EXACTLY what you're getting.

Yes, it will be more expensive than a "typical" prebuilt of similar specs, but it will be far less than a "high-quality" prebuilt (Alienware, Dell XPS, etc. - and yes I do realize that even the "high-quality" prebuilts are going downhill now) which is what a homebuilt system usually competes with in terms of specifications and component quality.

Like the parent to my post, I the only prebuilts I buy any more are laptops. (The one exception is the PowerEdge SC430 I specced out for my father's file server, but that's because I didn't have the time to support him in assembling it/maintaining it. The PE430 is a pretty good deal anyway.)

Re:You get what you pay for

[WuphonsReach]

Exactly. For the low-end, prebuilts are cheaper... but you get a cheap machine.

I just upgraded my game machine in the past month.

Antec Sonata II case w/ PSU, DVD-drive, (2) hard drives configured in RAID1.
Athlon64 X2 5200+, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard
(2) NVIDIA 7900GT PCIe cards in SLI
WinXP Pro

IIRC, the entire kit cost me around $1500, including shipping.

I don't even know if you could buy an equivalent system from Dell.

US$999 are you nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

With that amount you can buy a Mac mini and an Apple TV.

Intel should change the strategy

[adah]

The conclusion of the article is a little surprising, considering the performance advantage of the HP Viiv PC. But it makes sense: people regard video quality and game compatibility as more important. It makes sense, since NVIDIA simply has a long history delivering video solutions.

It is worth while that the AMD Live! solution uses NVIDIA instead of ATI for the graphics. It is a requirement of the Viiv platform to use the Intel graphics solution.—Intel should really consider a closer collaboration with NVIDIA to deliver better quality products.