hardcoredness & halo effect

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:19 pm

How many people here have built a computer since leaving school? I know Vinny and me.

Buying a computer does not count. You have to have built one from parts, new or used.

Assuming that Vinny is the only one besides me, you guys are the perfect target audience for my question, which requires technical knowledge but not the degree of hardcoreosity which mandates a rebuilt computer every two years.

My question is, how important is it to you when AMD or Intel has the top performing processor or AMD or Nvidia has the top performing graphics card? Do you compare the Dell and the HP and think, "well, HP is fifty bucks cheaper, but Dell has the Nvidia card and this generation, Nvidia has the fastest card." Does it influence your purchases even when you are not buying the extreme enthusiast products? Do you ever buy the performance parts (>$300 per component, or >$1500 for a desktop) or extreme enthusiast parts (>$500 per component, >$2000 for a desktop)?

Does the halo effect inform your purchasing recommendations to family members who depend on your technical expertise? For example, prior to the launch of the C2D were you in the habit of telling family members to look at HP systems with AMD because P4 systems from Dell were slow, regardless of which market segment they were in?

I have my own opinions regarding what the answers will be, but I will sit on them until someone responds. I have a point I'm trying to make but I don't want to color the responses.

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:48 pm

I'm guessing I'm excluded from this survey. However I'll link the Wikipedia Halo Effect article for those that only know its meaning through context (like my prior self).

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:58 pm

Actually, I did build my own about 6mos after starting here due to having absolutely nothing to do. This was before I got addicted to WoW, so I had wanted to play new-fully-purchased games at decent fps. (I bought AMD since it was cheaper for the same performance and bought a $300 graphics card - 6800GT, which was the best "sanely" priced card at the time.) Plus its loud as heck and I have to personally block the awesomely bright blue LED when I want to sleep + keep the computer on.

Halo Effect + retaded at build computers = Win!

I've since decided against ever building a computer of my own again, and will probably just buy Dells because of my amazing customer loyalty. I've had a working Dell running pretty much 24/7 since Freshman year. So the replacement will 99% be a Dell. Laptop-wise, my Dell kind of sucked. Mostly due to my newb choices, but it still works and is actually hooked up to my TV now. Pretty much the same with all components - Monitors (Sony) Hard-Drives (WD, Maxtor) Videocards (Nvidia).

I personally don't even follow the processor / videocard performance race anymore. There just aren't any applications outside of work where having a faster computer that can render more boxes really makes a difference to most people (myself included)

As for recommending for family members and "technical expertise" most don't care one bit about video card or even really processor performance - just reliability, noise, monitor size/type and most important price as far as hardware goes.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:18 pm

For my family already familiar with Dell (and I didn't want to be involved with the purchase), I was recommending just go with Dell since the performance/price difference wouldn't matter at all. When I was actually going through the effort of choosing and purchasing the computer, I went with HP or some other brand selling AMD processors. At this point, I don't think it matters which brand of processor much since many are dual-core and the single threaded speed isn't changing much. Same for graphics, I don't care. I'll usually just recommend to use whatever is integrated into the motherboard since the people I'm buying for won't play 3d games. Heck, I feel like I'm paying more attention to the amount/speed of RAM than anything.

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:22 pm

The Extreme Edition product (and I don't mean to single out Intel here, it's just I'm most familiar with Intel's branding) is meant as a halo effect product. It's supposed to be the best performing product when price is no object, and consumers buying mainstream systems are supposedly going to hear that company X has the fastest machine money can buy and spent their money on cut-down versions of the same. One might also argue that the enthusiast products not branded Extreme but with similar price points are intended for the same goal, but the volumes are a bit larger there.

Dave wrote:(I bought AMD since it was cheaper for the same performance and bought a $300 graphics card - 6800GT, which was the best "sanely" priced card at the time.)

I personally don't even follow the processor / videocard performance race anymore.

As for recommending for family members and "technical expertise" most don't care one bit about video card or even really processor performance - just reliability, noise, monitor size/type and most important price as far as hardware goes.

quantus wrote:At this point, I don't think it matters which brand of processor much. Same for graphics, I don't care.

This is pretty much what I expected except for Dave's bolded statement. The halo effect is negligible when you make purchasing decisions. Either one simply does not care about the performance of the machine or one actually finds out the performance of the components one is interested in purchasing. One doesn't buy the $200 product which is manufactured by the company with the fastest $1000 product.

I didn't expect brand loyalty like Dave's bolded statement indicated. Brand loyalty does render the halo effect moot.

Intel, Nvidia and AMD spend a fair amount of effort trying to create products to capture the halo effect. I do not think they spend much money to create halo effect products, and the prices they charge for these products are so ridiculous that these products are more than likely profitable, not loss leaders (I honestly have no idea).

As a shareholder, I think halo effect products are a good idea. If a market exists, one's company should come out for a product directed at it if it is profitable. As an architect, it bothers me that I spend so much of my personal effort focused on systems that we will sell fewer than ten million of when our total market is in the hundreds of millions. I think our sales would improve if architects spent more effort on heavily resource constrained mainstream platforms and initial hardware cost unconstrained server platforms, leaving the boutique halo effect parts as an afterthought.

I need to go write this into an email and tell my management. Blah.

George · Post by **George** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:43 pm

I built a new computer 6 months ago. I cared about the Core Duo 2 being faster/cheaper/cooler, but couldn't find a decent motherboard, so I went with the slightly worse AMD equivalent (~300 for the processor, IIRC). It wasn't directly a halo effect, though. One of the review sites had made a price vs performance graph and Intel won at every single point.

I chose an nVidia graphics card--7900gt (~250)--because I can't stand ATI's buggy .NET based driver. My previous card (ATI Radeon 9800 pro) blue screened repeatedly until I installed an older, slower driver that didn't use .NET.

I bought an ASUS motherboard (~150) because everyone bought it and everyone loved it.

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:52 pm

George wrote:One of the review sites had made a price vs performance graph and Intel won at every single point.

Heh, I attempted to phrase the question over the past several years where there was a bit of an inversion depending upon the price point you were looking at. You're right that at this moment in time C2D is the winner no matter which market segment you're in, except the value segment (just cause there aren't C2Ds in value yet). You can also find certain system configurations nowadays with integrated graphics where Intel may suck because our integrated graphics sucks.

So that's another win for my theory that halo effect is meaningless, and I'm sure Vinny counts as halo effect is meaningless. However, I think my sample is too technically oriented. I need to go ask some Circuit City salesmen.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:19 am

I mostly stopped caring because I saw no direct benefit for a current upgrade to my system performance other than a big hassle to transfer all my stuff. Web pages won't load any faster. Same reason why I don't even have a clue what Vista offers over XP.

When I tried Second Life, it ran pretty much like utter garbage. So maybe if there was a sudden fad/desire to run that well. Demand must be created! I just have none right now, so I'll focus my attention to other useless places, like if Lana will actually marry Lex Luthor this thursday.

Post by **Jonathan** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:43 am

Second Life is streaming every single texture and model in the game from their server. Unless you only see the same stuff every time you log in, SL is designed to run like ass. Get a 60 mbps connection and you'll be sorted.

I have one hope for PC games, and that is rockin' AI. Big hefty integer units is what we got to offer, and no amount of GPGPUs and PhysX cards is going to change that. Consoles are passing on integer performance this pass around, so that's like a five year window to get something happening. There probably needs to be a new genre invented to go with that killer AI. Dunno what.

For the wider case, has there been a killer app since the browser was invented? Maybe filesharing? Both require throwing money at the internet, not hardware. It would be fun to graph bandwidth over time versus hardware performance over time and see if we'll ever have enough bandwidth or if hardware is forever doomed to be idling while waiting for packets to arrive.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:48 am

How about significant tax breaks for SETI-type programs?

George · Post by **George** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:50 am

Is bandwidth keeping up with Moore's law?

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:58 am

Actually, when I was lloking at expensive houses in the area (1+), some of them touted having fiber optic cabling pre-wired for whenever that got widespread.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:33 am

There are some neighborhoods around here that were built into the city fiber loops and get ridiculous bandwidth into the apartments / town homes. By ridiculous, I mean on the order of 10s of MBits/s. It would be real nice to live in certain parts of Emeryville, CA because of this.

George · Post by **George** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:47 am

I have 5Mb over fiber, but if I weren't so cheap the fiber supports 15Mb. The fiber runs all the way into my closet. Vinny was thinking about getting the high end one, but I don't think his house is wired.

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:08 am

George wrote:Vinny was thinking about getting the high end one, but I don't think his house is wired.

Nope, not wired. However, fiber was put into the ground right outside my home ~1 year ago. Combined with the flurry of advertising sent to my community and the phone calls I've made, I'm 100% sure it's available. I'll likely try upgrading once my current work task is done.

Regarding speed, I'm looking into the 30/5 package for $54.95/month.