Ugh, the sad state of big-box pre-built desktops. (Atom / Kabini)

[NTMBK]

Oh wow, I found a new worst culprit:

http://www.ebuyer.com/639650-hp-compaq-100-desktop-e1f95ea-abu

Guess what's in that gigantic, full width microATX case? A freaking Bobcat. In 2014. HP should be ashamed of themselves.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

Oh wow, I found a new worst culprit:

http://www.ebuyer.com/639650-hp-compaq-100-desktop-e1f95ea-abu

Guess what's in that gigantic, full width microATX case? A freaking Bobcat. In 2014. HP should be ashamed of themselves.

they do that cuz most people would think "gee, dat looks like what i got at home, and computas git fasta, so it must be mo betta dan what i got at home. ill take one"

 

[DeathReborn]

"But it says Pentium on the box! Pentium is a good brand, right?"

This is the problem right there, Atom creeping into well known brands and not being up to the task. Celeron I can understand but Pentium is 1 rung too high in my opinion. Hopefully Core-M will have some low priced options to push Atom back but I doubt it. Ironically for the price of a Athlon II X2 system 4 years ago you can now own a Pentium Atom 4GB 500GB box that is 99% air. I'll take the X2 any day.

Windows 9 won't help with this product creep either since Microsoft will want it to run on as many tablets as possible.

 

[taltamir]

Is it really, though? If you put two big desktop boxes next to each other in a store, both of them have a "Pentium", but one of them has four cores and is way cheaper! Which one do you think the general public will buy?

this was already clarified in the 2 posts right after the one you quoted. I thought he was referring to tiny form factor ones. not to putting an atom in a full tower.

"But it says Pentium on the box! Pentium is a good brand, right?"

now that is quite scummy of intel.

 

[DominionSeraph]

$250 Desktop PCs didn't exist five years ago. Your hypothetical Athlon was probably four or five hundred dollars in 2009.

It wasn't in 2010:
http://slickdeals.net/f/2197292-20-off-any-dell-outlet-inspiron-570-desktop-pc

Inspiron 570 with mini tower
Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 245 (2.9GHz, 2MB)
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
4 GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz (4 DIMMs)
320 GB SATA II Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

Comes with optical mouse and usb keyboard

Its scratch and dent, so its not used or refurbished, just dinged.

It won't be for gaming, so much as for image editing at a home office (photoshop mostly)

Price was $230 with free shipping, $240 with tax

I picked up a Dimension E521 with an X2 5200+ for $350 in 2006 from Dell retail, and that's faster than a J1800.

 

[NTMBK]

It wasn't in 2010:
http://slickdeals.net/f/2197292-20-off-any-dell-outlet-inspiron-570-desktop-pc

I picked up a Dimension E521 with an X2 5200+ for $350 in 2006 from Dell retail, and that's faster than a J1800.

That was 8 years ago... adjust for inflation, and that $350 desktop would cost ~$420 in 2014 dollars.

 

[Kitlope]

Check out the $4500.00 junk that the rent-to-own company Easyhome sells.

This is what $39.00 week for 104 weeks buys you. Add taxes and fee's and you're looking at around $4500.00.

22" LCD monitor; 8GB DDR3; 1TB HDD
AMD FX 4130 Quad Core
Radeon HD6670

http://www.easyhome.ca/computers/desktop/computer_desktop_best_cdcybsq_1089079

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Guess what's in that gigantic, full width microATX case? A freaking Bobcat. In 2014. HP should be ashamed of themselves.

Add a touchscreen, wifi, bluetooth KB and mouse and that will be the most painful desktop computing experience on earth. Makes the J1800 look like a Ferrari

 

[ninaholic37]

does anyone know whether something like that would be linux compatible?

Yes. I'm curious, are there any CPUs/Motherboards that are not?

 

[Morgoth780]

Check out the $4500.00 junk that the rent-to-own company Easyhome sells.

This is what $39.00 week for 104 weeks buys you. Add taxes and fee's and you're looking at around $4500.00.

22" LCD monitor; 8GB DDR3; 1TB HDD
AMD FX 4130 Quad Core
Radeon HD6670

http://www.easyhome.ca/computers/desktop/computer_desktop_best_cdcybsq_1089079

Dear lord....

That is absolutely awful.

And to think I disapproved of my friend's prebuilt purchase with an FX 6100 (either that or a 4170) and a GT 640 for $500.

I really don't think there's much I can add to the whole discussion. Maybe there should just be some form of requirement on prebuilts to show "benchmarks" done by a 3rd party. And by "benchmarks" I mean showing things such as time to boot, time to open MS word, etc. Maybe a couple of gaming benchmarks in some popular games (Cod maybe? Although that isn't as popular on PC as it is on console). Just, you know, something to help your average joe figure out what to buy that suits his needs.

 

[crashtech]

As always, "caveat emptor." The root of the complaint is that purchasers of these products are ignorant, otherwise such machines would likely not exist.

 

[Homeles]

I was at my local Staples store, and there is a coupon for $100 off clearance computers until Aug 30. They had two desktop PCs listed, one for $249.99, one for $279.99.

Edit: Those were the CLEARANCE prices, list prices stated on the sign was $399.99 ea, I believe.

I was surprised that no-one picked them up for $100 off already. Then I googled the specs.

The $249.99 Dell was a J1800 Celeron (Bay Trail-D Atom). The $279.99 one was an HP, I think, with an A4 in it (small core).

Although both were quad-cores, they just didn't seem powerful enough to waste $150-170 on.

The "race to the bottom", including the introduction of Atom / Kabini into desktop PCs, sold for as much as $400 list (4GB / 500GB), is also partially what is killing the desktop market.

Along with the stagnation of the higher-end Core CPUs as far as absolute performance goes (and how much does 10W of power consumption matter on the desktop? Not a whit, to most people).

If I were an average desktop user, and my PC was five years old, and I went into a store and purchased a brand-new budget-class PC, and found out that it was in fact SLOWER than my five-year-old PC, I think that I would be turned off of desktop PCs forever.

I can understand Atom and Kabini / Beema in laptops. Power-consumption is king there, as long as you have adequate or better performance. I don't fault Intel or AMD for pushing their small-core lines there.

But desktops? What garbage!

I would rather have a five-year-old Walmart-special desktop, with 4GB of RAM (removable, not soldered in), and an AMD Athlonn II X2 250 rig, than a modern Atom rig, even with quad-core. (Because the Athlon II has superior single-threaded performance.)

With computers, you get what you pay for -- quite literally. If you don't want a garbage computer, you need to shell out more cash than you would for a bargain bin PC.

This is much more important for the PC industry than most others.

Unfortunately, the general populace is very ignorant about all things computers, and it is a sad fact of life that they will be preyed upon for remaining ignorant.

As always, "caveat emptor." The root of the complaint is that purchasers of these products are ignorant, otherwise such machines would likely not exist.

They'd certainly exist, just not in that kind of volume. These are useful processors. The main issue, IMO, is that they're just a bit early for mainstream adoption. Solid state drives need to come down in price, to the point that using a budget processor with them is tolerable for most users and tolerable for most OEMs to use them over HDDs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

With computers, you get what you pay for -- quite literally. If you don't want a garbage computer, you need to shell out more cash than you would for a bargain bin PC.

But the list price on the Sandy Bridge i3 I picked up some time ago, was $399.99. That was also the list price for the J1800 rig. Does that make sense to you, in the context of "you get what you pay for"? Substituting Atoms for i3s, at the same price point, is "watering down the milk".

The main issue, IMO, is that they're just a bit early for mainstream adoption. Solid state drives need to come down in price, to the point that using a budget processor with them is tolerable for most users and tolerable for most OEMs to use them over HDDs.

I could potentially see them selling these low-end tablet/netbook-class CPUs, WITH SSDs, as a budget value proposition. (Trading off CPU horsepower for SSD performance.) But even then, there's no substitute for displacement with CPUs.

 

[Abwx]

But the list price on the Sandy Bridge i3 I picked up some time ago, was $399.99. That was also the list price for the J1800 rig. Does that make sense to you, in the context of "you get what you pay for"? Substituting Atoms for i3s, at the same price point, is "watering down the milk".

The point is to make money and to succeed you must give as little as possible for the $, in this respect the lower end Kabini/Bay trails SKUs are a welcomed bonanza for unscrupulous so called manufacturers, they simply cashed the $ that thoses low cost solutions were supposed to spare to low incomes customers.

 

[Homeles]

But the list price on the Sandy Bridge i3 I picked up some time ago, was $399.99. That was also the list price for the J1800 rig. Does that make sense to you, in the context of "you get what you pay for"? Substituting Atoms for i3s, at the same price point, is "watering down the milk".

The main issue with Bay Trail is that the bill of materials doesn't really justify the performance. Later iterations of Atom should address this. Today's Atom desktops are indeed awful, but next year's should not only be considerably faster, but quite a bit less expensive as well.

In the end however, consumers will actually be saving quite a bit of money when it comes to their power bill, over the lifespan of their computer. That's something that is difficult to quantify, but does have an advantage over the i3 setup you mentioned.

I could potentially see them selling these low-end tablet/netbook-class CPUs, WITH SSDs, as a budget value proposition. (Trading off CPU horsepower for SSD performance.) But even then, there's no substitute for displacement with CPUs.

Sure, but typically that "displacement" as you put it isn't needed in these machines. Current systems are a bit weak in the metric, but that will change in the first half of next year.

 

[VirtualLarry]

In the end however, consumers will actually be saving quite a bit of money when it comes to their power bill, over the lifespan of their computer. That's something that is difficult to quantify, but does have an advantage over the i3 setup you mentioned.

Maybe, but unless you're poor and your time is worthless, that's a poor tradeoff. Here in the USA, power is relatively cheap. A person's lifetime (on this earth, at least) is finite. Is it worth wasting 2x the time on the PC, just to save $1/mo in power consumption?

Sure, but typically that "displacement" as you put it isn't needed in these machines. Current systems are a bit weak in the metric, but that will change in the first half of next year.

I'm curious what you mean by that. 14nm Atoms? They may save power, but I don't believe that they will be much if any faster. (Although I hear that they are beefing up the GPU on the Atom, with more EUs.)

 

[Homeles]

Maybe, but unless you're poor and your time is worthless, that's a poor tradeoff. Here in the USA, power is relatively cheap. A person's lifetime (on this earth, at least) is finite. Is it worth wasting 2x the time on the PC, just to save $1/mo in power consumption?

No, definitely not. Keep in mind, I am not "for" the widespread use of Bay Trail as a Haswell Celeron/Pentium substitute. I think the move was a year premature.

I'm curious what you mean by that. 14nm Atoms? They may save power, but I don't believe that they will be much if any faster. (Although I hear that they are beefing up the GPU on the Atom, with more EUs.)

They'll operate at a higher frequency thanks to the new process, and likely have a fair bump in per-clock performance.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

\Today's Atom desktops are indeed awful, but next year's should not only be considerably faster, but quite a bit less expensive as well.

\

havent we been hearing this ever since atom came out?

 

[Roland00Address]

Oh wow, I found a new worst culprit:

Guess what's in that gigantic, full width microATX case? A freaking Bobcat. In 2014. HP should be ashamed of themselves.

That is the exact type of computer I am talking about that pisses me off. HP seems to do it more but all the oems do it to some degree. It makes you even angrier when you open the case and see what it looks like and what the motherboard looks like. Here is a pict of the motherboard

Notice the only thing you can upgrade is the ram and there are only 2 sata slots and thus you can not add another hard drive without taking off the dvd drive. So why is it in a big case again?

Now look at the back panel

Notice it does not have a normal psu but instead a laptop dc 19 power brick

Remember this motherboard is mini itx so only 17x17 cm tall (sub 7 inches) yet the computer case is Height: 36.38 cm (14.32 inches)xWidth: 16.5 cm (6.50 inches)xDepth: 38.45 cm (15.14 inches).

So the motherboard takes 47% the height, and 44% the depth and thus we are talking about taking less than 1/4 of the computer case all in a corner. That means the computer case is more than 75% empty air for a cpu/gpu/soc that is 18 watts of tdp.

75% empty air and no expansion, not even a pci or pci e slot, not even an empty sata slot for another hard drive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That wouldn't be so bad if it were actually in a mini-ITX case, with an SSD, IMHO. But to "fool" customers that it was a full-size PC? Not good.

I hope that eventually the Asus VivoPC gets retail availability at places like BestBuy. I actually think desktops can be "cool" again, if mfgs embrace smaller more compact form-factors. My hope is that most budget / entry-level PCs become USFF, and then the only large towers would all be gaming machines or professional workstations.

That would mean that OEMs would have to step up their game, and start including decent video cards in the gaming rigs. A 7770 1GB at the very least. Surely they could get a qty discount.

 

[crashtech]

There's a sucker born every minute!

 

[alexruiz]

I personally wouldn't have that big of a problem with a Beema / Kabini pre-built desktop, as long as it is a 2.0 GHz+ quad core part (Athlon 5350 / A8-6410)
But the 1.5Ghz dual cores? Simply ridiculous!

On defense on the OEMs, however, I have to say that if they are looking for bottom of the barrel price wise, and if AMD has lower cost parts than the Athlon 5350, the OEMs will take it... every single time! I am probably the biggest AMD fanboy, but I don't see why see parts like the sempron 3650, E1-1200 and C50 exist at all (or existed) A lot of people who buy a PC with those CPUs / APUs will be so disappointed they will blame AMD before blaming HP.

AMD, you don't want the OEMs to put those parts in desktops, don't offer them at all!
I understand bad dies have to be salvaged, so you get dual cores or less shaders, but at least keep the clocks the same (high) But a 1GHz part when the highest clocked is 2GHz? The manufacturing porcess cannot be that bad that all they salvaged was a dual core 1GHz

Some time ago, at some point I was looking for a brazos netbook, and couldn't find anything decent at 11in or less with an E350, only the C50 was available at those sizes. Neddles to say, I didn't buy one.

With Mulllins, let's see how many devices with the A10 micro-6700T will be available for sale, I would venture to say NONE. All the designs will be using the e1 micro-6200t simply because it was available from AMD and it was the cheapest...

 

[Roland00Address]

That wouldn't be so bad if it were actually in a mini-ITX case, with an SSD, IMHO. But to "fool" customers that it was a full-size PC? Not good.

My point exactly, we are in a 100% agreement.

These cpus are not bad if the have the right balance and usage model with them. Like the right OS, such as android, linux, xmbc, and windows is getting better at this every day. But they also need the right usage model with limited amount of programs running, and the need extremely fast storage for these cpus are not really being used for "thinking" and deep thought, they are instead using to move data around and to be a portal to other networks. And this type of usage requires fast networks and fast storage to feed the cpu which is doing the task of moving stuff around.

The old desktop of the 90s is dead. It still exist in some usage models such as power users using a workstation or gaming computer, but more and more we are moving to a connected computing experience with networks, internet, phones, connected appliances, media tvs etc. And for that type of tasks it is not just the cpu that is important, it is everything else such as the gpu, the networks, the storage, the screen, the portability, and to some extent the ram, etc. Big cpus are still important in servers and workstations, the Wizard of Oz behind it all but in theory you should not be seeing the old man behind the curtain, instead you should be seeing a fantasy world be woven around you and for that you do not need a big cpu, you need a big everything else.

Anand and an AMD project leader I can't remember his name but to my understand he is no longer with AMD used to talk of the holodeck and making the holodeck real with things such as eyefinity in the near 10 to 20 years future. Well in star trek if they are showing you the computers that make the holodeck real instead of the bad episodes with sherlock holmes or something then they screwed up the storytelling. I do not need to see a server farm, I need to see what the server farm actually creates with the world around me.

 

[Concillian]

Tablet CPUs in desktop form factors are a travesty, and as the go-to tech guy for a lot of people, it just makes my job that much harder when it comes to helping people make good decisions.

It makes the "go to tech guy" into "Debbie downer" pretty often, because they think it's a cool thing at a good price and you have to be the one to tell them there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Used to be there were diamonds in the rough from time to time, but now the companies are smarter and prices are a lot more in line, such that if you want fast and sleek, it's NOT going to be cheap.

 

[Roland00Address]

It makes the "go to tech guy" into "Debbie downer" pretty often, because they think it's a cool thing at a good price and you have to be the one to tell them there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The counter argument is that if the tech guy knows what the customer really wants to do, and he knows how to put it together you can get something awesome for cheap. Most people do not need an i7 with insane multi threading capabilities and cpu girth. What a

• haswell celeron g1840 (2.8 ghz) is around $40 and gets roughly 70% the single threaded performance of the i7 4770 and
  haswell pentium g3258 (3.2 ghz) is around $75 and gets roughly 80% the single thread performance of the i7 4770 at stock speeds

Throw in enough ram and a ssd and you will get a desktop computer that will suit most people's needs. The same logic applies to a laptop but it is harder to get a deal with a laptop. Get a fast enough cpu, pick a laptop with a ssd option to upgrade (such as msata), reload the os, and then you can focus on form factor and battery life to make your dollar go farther. Unfortunately the laptops with nice screens often have cpus that most people do not need.

----

Sadly such options do not exist often prebuilt on the market (by design to encourage you to step up) and it requires some work from the tech guy but it is easy to tweak things to get the best for your dollar. This is no different than any technical field, how many people are buying cheap cards and getting their hands dirty and tweaking parts of the engine to get the performance of faster pre built cars that go for much more.

Yes it takes time, knowledge, and getting your hands dirty to achieve this result but this is by design from the OEM makers. They are trying to simplify things, you want the best well buy my luxury line not the inspiron but the xps or the alienware and in the process hand me over lots of money due to the higher cost and higher margins. I am able to making a living and feeding my family by making it easy enough yet hard enough where in the end you give up and buy what I want you to buy for the time wasting figuring it all out is not worth the time you could be instead working, or playing with your kids, or dealing with the stress of figuring it all out.

----

There are still bargains out there, they just penalize or reward the possession and lack of technical knowledge, but everything on our planet rewards or penalizes the technical knowledge for technical knowledge is at its core an investment where you give up a short term gain to gain a longer gain in the future.

And investments over the long term increase the "pie" and add more usable resources in your environment.