CyberLink claims AMD is not ready for HD/BD

THE TAIWANESE COMPANY MOST known for its excellent software DVD player, PowerDVD - decided to help out users that aren't certain if their hardware and software combo fits the bill for upcoming DRM-infected media, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The company posted out a beta version of BD/HD DVD Advisor, which will remain a free utility.

Regardless of your opinions on the Blu-ray/HD-DVD war, having a utility that checks your system for compatibility certainly isn't something to be sneezed at. After reading the press release, yours truly went on the website and downloaded the utility. The installation is non-existent: this 643 KB file only needs unpacking the folder onto your hard drive and running it from there - very simple and pure.

The utility itself is just a base window that gives you an opportunity to run the test for Blu-ray or for HD-DVD compliance. Basically, it will do nothing else but check your computer for following components:

Processor

System memory

Operating system

Graphics card & Drivers

BD/HD drive

Software Player

HDCP compliant Display

If the component inside your computer passes the test, you will see a green light. CyberLinks' "Upgrade Recommended" is marked yellow, while "No" or non-compliant component will be marked read. Pretty much the stuff understandable to 3-year old children. Also, if the component is marked red or yellow, right to the mark will be the info button which opens CyberLink web-page with appropriate advice.

I took my four test machines for the run, and the results were quite... interesting.

Testing configuration #1 is consisted out of AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 CPU on a Foxconn breakyournamewhileyouspellit nForce 590 based motherboard, two gigs of excellent GeIL MultiSpec memory (full review coming out next week), Nvidia GeForce 7950GX2 graphics adapter, 250 Gig Seagate and Hiper 580W PSU. DVD device was Samsung SATA DVD burner. Monitor connected to the graphics card was four year old Dell's 19" LCD baby with zero HDCP compliance.

Testing configuration #2 is consisted out of Intel EE 955 CPU and D975XBX motherboard, four gigs of Corsair memory and Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX graphics card. 250gig Seagate and a PSU from a company which makes most other PSUs look amateurish - Tagan 580W in EasyCon variant. The monitor was of course, non-HDCP 19" Samsung 959NF CRT. The DVD device is Plextor PX-760A.

Our third configuration is a Samsung Q30Plus notebook, equipped with Intel Pentium M 753 (1.2 GHz), 512 megs of memory, 32 gigs of flash drive and an external firewire DVD burner. Graphics is Intel's crappola', e.g. integrated graphics GMA 900, Monitor is not HDCP compliant, nor do I have the ability to DRM-infect it, of course.

Fourth configuration is MSI MegaBook S271 notebook. Dual-core Turion 64 ML-50 (1.6 GHz), 1GB of system memory, 80 gig hard drive and internal DVD burner. Integrated graphics is luckily ATI Mobility Radeon X300, and the screen is pretty much same as Samsung's one - 12.1 inches and a resolution of 1280x800 pixels.

The first two systems were multi-boot configurations with Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista Beta 2 (64-bit was installed on an AMD system, 32-bit were running on Intel), while both notebooks had their default installations - Windows XP SP2.

We ran the CyberLink BD/HD Advisor v1 on all of the machines and the results were quite surprising. While notebooks failed on terms of graphics, system memory (on Samsung only) - we have expected that Samsung notebook with its puny Pentium CPU will end up as the only red-flagged CPU.

However, we were deadly wrong. The utility classified both of our AMD-based machines as inappropriate - so, latest dual-core AMD CPUs are red flagged.

We have re-run tests on both Windows Vista and XP, changed CPUs and even motherboards - but the lights remained the same: AMD CPUs are marked red. We're not quite sure at the moment - why did CyberLink launch even a beta version of the product, if that product contradicts statements made on their web-page?

Anyways, you can take a look at the utility if you download it via our complementary L'INQ. Also, we're providing you with their official page containing a list of recommended CPUs for high-def content reproduction. Other than this minor glitch, this utility could prove valuable. That's if you run Intel CPUs, of course. ?

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Hmmm...CPUs should be greenflaged. Or not?