quaoar

It's price/performance in favor of AMD, clearly for laptops and desktops both, IMO. CPU performance in general has far outstripped the requirements of the vast majority of users and paying what amounts to a premium for the Big P logo makes no sense at all when there is no real performance enhancement for P to accompany the cost.

You don't say if the USB hub is externally powered or not, and if there are USB devices plugged into it at boot. If the hub is not externally powered, then the startup freeze might be a a low power issue in which the hub cannot be polled. If the hub is externally powered, the problem might be related to a USB device on the hub that is being polled before the hub itself is initiated. I have seen this happen on Windows9x where an external CD writer was freezing the system when the OS was trying to start it before the hub was started. In any event, when USB hubs are involved, I always suspect power before anything else. If the hub can be powered extenally, then try powering it before boot.