Hp and a class in Marketing Ethics

Hp and a class in Marketing Ethics

Report by Havok_rls2



For those of you who have been keeping up with my posts on this forum you pretty much know that I’m about give you my final (maybe) report regarding the “single channel/dual channel memory controller issues on the socket 939 AMD 64 processors used in the Hp series zv6000 and r4000 notebook computers.

Simply put… It’s all Hp’s fault and there is nothing they are planning to do about it…
Believe it or not it is really that simple, but let me start somewhere towards the beginning and give some of you that are lost a brief minute to catch up.

Ready???? Here goes nothing.

Today I spent most of my day trying to get and English speaking Hp representative until I got all for about fed up and called Hp corporate headquarters in Palo Alto CA(650-857-5518). The phone attendant transferred me to Hp Executive Customer Relations (650-857-7166) after opening a case file for my issues.
The first person I spoke to was David who was attentive enough to listen and actually take notes on my concerns regarding the “single channel/dual channel issues with the AMD 64 processors” and why Windows XP x64 will not be supported by these two systems. In all fairness he did inform me that he was completely non-technical but would research my issues with his Hp Engineering Department. Cool!
About 2 hours later David calls me back with answers to my questions in the form of an e-mail he received for engineering. Just not the right answers.
The e-mail from the engineering stated that the zv6000 series notebooks do not support dual channel memory…Blaaa… Blaaa… Blaaa. Mu-na-ma-nah…
I strongly disagreed and explained to David why I thought the engineers were avoiding the question with vague answers. I even want so far as to give him a AMD specs briefings that my A+ instructor would have been proud of. Again he took his note and ran with it all the way back to the Hp Engineers. Meanwhile I got on the phone and called AMD technical support. While on the phone with AMD confirming that Hp couldn’t have ordered a bunch of wacky single channel 939 chips, I receive another call back from David at Hp. Now imagine if you will AMD tech support in one ear and Hp Customer Relations on the other and I say” Hey David, could you hold on for a second? I have AMD on the phone right now.” LAMO
Well after ending my conversation with the AMD tech and getting back on the phone with David at Hp, he transferred me over the Paul who just so happen to be one of the lead Engineer specializing in notebook PCs. Paul got right to the meat of things in his attempt to explain to me why the zv6000 and r4000 do not and will not support dual channel memory control. THE HARDWARE WILL NOTE SUPPORT IT!
Okay but why? It’s because the chipset on these two model notebook computer were not designed by the manufacturer to support the dual channel and, NO. A BIOS update can’t and won’t fix the issue. The problem lay in the south bridge of the mainboard which does in-fact control the function of the memory controller on the processor. Or something like that… The problem is that those needed pathways don’t exists on the mainboard chipset.WTF!!!!
It doesn’t stop there boys and girls. How would you like to know that Hp knew about this the whole time? YES! They sure did. I asked that exact question and the answer I received was the following; “Well laptops were designed to conserve power so some function have to be cut in order to keep it usable under battery power, no notebook on the market has the same power as a desktop.” Yes but are you aware that this is supposed to be a desktop replacement and Windows has power management tools? What about the options for people working on AC power and if power conservation was it be an issue, why not stay with the socket 754 chips with the 512kb L1 and 1mb L2? By you putting the 939 chips in and not supporting the dual channel memory you’ve quite honestly crippled it and made it slower than the 754 because at least that one was designed to be single channel. I got no answer… But I kept asking questions anyway.
You see what Hp has successfully done is sold all it’s customers a product based completely on the reputation that AMD has created for the Athlon 64 processor even though they know it wouldn’t work to AMD factory specs on their(Hp) mainboards and even got us all(including myself) to pay more for it. Out-freaking-standing!
Oh! I almost forgot. The ATI IGP issues everyone seems to be having… same reason. The fact of the matter is that those who just so happen to have the zv5000 hp notebook actually have a better laptop then any of us who have the zv6000 or r4000.
Before I got off the phone with Paul I asked him one final question. How can we resolve this issue? What should I tell my users who currently have these two model notebook? Answer; “They can return then if that haven’t had them more than 30 days.”
I’m thinking…. DUH!

Not to pour salt in anyone’s wounds but I thought you should know that the AMD 64 4000+ with the dual channels turned off is has actually about the same performance as the 754 Athlon 64 3600. Just a little bit of information I pick up during my conversation with AMD.

- Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional with SP2
- AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3200+ (2.0GHz/512KB L2 Cache)
- 15.4" WXGA BrightView Widescreen
- 128MB ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M w/Hypermemory(TM)
- 512MB DDR SDRAM (1x512MB)
- 80 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
- DVD+/-RW/R & CD-RW Combo w/Double Layer Support
- 54g(TM) Integ. Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

 

Well i got mine at costco so i guess i will be using that 6 month return policy

Desktop:
P4 2.4GHZ 800MHZ FSB
20gb maxtor,120gb Samsung Spinpoint,120GB WD
Geforce FX 5700LE 256MB,
Antec Sonata case W/480Watt TruPower

Laptop:
Compaq R4000
80GB 5400RPM
Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4ghz 1mb cache
128MB xpress 200m
15.4 BrightView screen
1GB ram (2X512)

 

Thanks for clearing that up for us!

In reguards to the graphics card problem, cant you just use ATItool to up the memory and clock voltages?

If you can't overclock with the ATItool, is there another program that i can use?

Has anyone gotten the omeaga drivers to work with the ZV6000 series?

Thanks!

~HP Pavilion ZV6000 series~
-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz
-512MB RAM
-128MB ATI Mobility radeon X200m
-80GB 5400RPM HDD
-15.4" Widescreen w/ Brightview
-DVD±RW W/DL support
-XP Pro
-2X 12-Cell Batteries

 

Thanks for finding all this out for us! Nice to see someone actually get answers from HP.[^]

That is a cheap trick by HP, and it does seem that they are somewhat using AMD's rep and misrepresenting what is in these notebooks. However, before you all want to return it for these reasons, the main factor in deciding whether you should keep it or not should be: Does it fit my needs and was the price right for what I got compared to the competition? For me, it was, even with the crippled chipset. For most users, the corners cut won't even be noticeable, which is probably why HP cut them.

 

great job sheding some light on the powers of the used amd chipset.

I think I read elsewhere that in normal use you would only see roughly a 5% decrease to a dual channel would yeild.

so just to know the impact is the major point of the argument is that basically hp is not using the full potential of the amd64 and the possiblity of upgrading to the next big chip that would need dualchannel support is now not avialble?

 

Havok, thanks a lot for all the time you spent researching this for us. I know you must've spent an outrageous amount of time to get to the bottom of this dual/single channel controversy. Looks like I might be using Costco's 6 month return policy. I'm so glad I spent the extra money and got my ZV6000 at Costco. I end up appreciating my old ZV5220US even more every time I hear something negative with the supposedly better ZV6000.

HP Pavilion zv6000
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)
15.4" Brightview (1280x800)
512MB DDR SDRAM (2x256)
MS Windows XP Pro w/ SP2
80GB 5400 RPM
DVD+/-RW CD-RW Combo Drive
128MB ATI Radeon Xpress 200M
802.11 b/g, Bluetooth
8 cell battery

 

Great thread!!...kudos to Havok![ ]

------------------------------
Http://www.zv6000forums.com

For all zv6k/r4k dialogue.
------------------------------

R4000 with:
Athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz/512kb L2cache)
15.4" Widescreen w/Brightview
1,024MB DDR SDRAM (2x512-PC2700)
60GB-5400RPM HardDrive
54(g)Broadcom Integ.Wireless w/Speedbooster & Bluetooth
12cell battery