In spite of high CPU costs, Pentium system prices are coming down
Ed Perratore
Now that Pentium-based PCs are hitting the market in force, the next natural step is lower prices. Gateway 2000 took that step first by offering a complete configuration of its P5-60 Pentium system for just under $3000. Other vendors are not far behind, so buyers of these first inexpensive Pentium systems are not without choices for an Intel-based graphics workstation or low-end file server. For this roundup, BYTE asked for the most souped-up system the vendors offered beneath a $4500 price ceiling.
The three systems I reviewed--Advanced Logic Research's Evolution V, Ambra Computer's Ambra DP60E/VL, and Gateway 2000's P5-60--deliver generally robust performance aided by local-bus architecture. The ALR system also had a cach
ing IDE pass-through card that greatly boosted applications performance.
ALR's Evolution V is an ISA, VL-Bus desktop system that, for $4314, comes with 16 MB of RAM, a 420-MB IDE hard drive, an IDE card with 1 MB of cache memory, a Western Digital VL-Bus graphics accelerator card, and an ALR ClearView 15 monitor. Ambra's $4399 EISA desktop offers 16 MB of RAM, a 540-MB SCSI-2 hard drive with a 256-KB cache/ buffer, an ATI graphics accelerator card running in a VL-Bus slot, and a 15-inch monitor.
Gateway weighed in with the only PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) machine, an ISA tower model with 16 MB of RAM, a 528-MB IDE hard drive, an ATI PCI graphics accelerator card, and a 17-inch CrystalScan 1776 LE monitor. With a Mitsumi CD-ROM drive added to my test model, the Gateway costs $3995.
All three systems came with DOS and Windows installed. The Gateway P5-60 also included Central Point Software's PC Tools for Windows and, on a CD-ROM disc, backups of the preinstalled software.
ALR Evolution V
ALR typically sells its PCs through vertical-market VARs, who may configure the bare-bones Evolution V Model 1 with a hard drive and graphics card appropriate for the customer. For the system that I reviewed, ALR's choice of video adapter alternately raced and jogged, depending on the test. The Evolution V also fell short of the other two systems in color capability: It offered a maximum of 16-bit color at 800- by 600-pixel resolution, while the competing machines offered 24-bit color at that resolution. (I ran graphics performance tests on all the systems with 8-bit color at 640- by 480-pixel resolution.) Other than the WD90C33-based graphics accelerator card, which a CAD/CAM user might want to pass over in favor of a higher-end card, there is not much to criticize about the Evolution V.
The desktop system's sturdy case holds a 31/2-inch floppy drive and three exposed 51/4-inch drive bays. Secured by two finger-turnable screws, the case is easy to remove. A printed chart inside th
e case lists bank-by-bank memory configurations up to the maximum 128 MB (using 32-MB SIMMs, which ALR promises it can supply).
Populating the motherboard are the 60-MHz Pentium CPU (cooled by an extra fan in the system's front panel as well as a top-mounted heat sink), 256 KB of secondary memory cache (the maximum), a Phoenix BIOS, Chips & Technologies and Opti chip sets, and six 16-bit ISA slots. Three of the slots have VL-Bus extenders. The Super VGA card sits on the VL-Bus, as does the caching IDE card, which is able to accommodate up to 16 MB of cache RAM.
The ALR-made motherboard also has IDE and floppy drive connectors, but the optional caching IDE pass-through card is a wise choice if you're concerned about disk performance. The IDE board's write-back cache is optimized for Windows. The cache gave the Evolution V an outstanding disk index in the BYTE Lab's Windows benchmarks and largely accounts for the Evolution V's lead in the DOS and Windows application benchmarks. One thing to keep i
n mind, however, is that installing a good local-bus disk cache in the Gateway and Ambra systems might well even the score.
In low-level video testing, the Evolution V's performance was roughly double that of the competition. But in the more real-world Windows benchmarks, the system proved superior only in drawing pixels and performing BitBlts, often falling well behind in drawing lines, rectangles, and ellipses. The Western Digital board comes with only 1 MB of VRAM (video RAM), half what the two ATI boards came with, but it can hold 2 MB.
If what you want from the system is a file server, you're bound to be disappointed by the Evolution V's 200-W power supply, six expansion slots, and total of six drive bays. A better choice would be ALR's Evolution V-Q, which BYTE tested in our look at the first Pentium systems out of the gate (see "Pentium PCs: Power to Burn," July 1993 BYTE). That machine features a 128-bit-wide data path to system memory, a tower case, 10 EISA slots appropriate for connect
ing lots of fast mass-storage devices, and 13 exposed drive bays. The Evolution V-Q also costs nearly $2000 more than the Evolution V in a similar configuration.
And if what you want is PCI rather than VL-Bus in a Pentium system, ALR expects to soon ship the Evolution V STP, in 60- and 66-MHz versions. The former will start at $3410 for an 8-MB system with DOS and Windows but no hard drive or monitor. Both versions will include a single-channel integrated Fast SCSI-2 controller as well. The PCI bus allows concurrent operation by the CPU and PCI peripherals, something VL-Bus doesn't yet allow.
Ambra DP60E/VL
The 22-pound Ambra DP60E/VL seems to use only as much steel as necessary to support the 55-pound weight of Ambra's largest monitor. Yet the mostly plastic case not only is sturdy, it also removes without screws and can be converted to a mini-tower.
Inside you'll find some attractive features. Among them are an Adaptec AIC-7770P Fast SCSI-2 dual-channel chip set and connector that le
t you hook up as many as 14 SCSI devices; an Acer/Ambra-designed BIOS; and six EISA slots, two with VL-Bus extensions. An Opti chip set is spread between the motherboard and the CPU daughtercard, which also holds the external memory cache. The 16 MB of RAM is upgradable to 64 MB (actually 128 MB by design, but Ambra cannot guarantee shipment of 32-MB SIMMs any time soon). My test model also came with a Seagate ST3610N SCSI-2 drive with 256 KB of on-board, write-back cache.
What I found less appealing were a few corners Ambra cut in its mission to deliver lower-priced systems than you'll ever see from parent company IBM. The design of the daughtercard housing the processor and secondary cache is worrisome; a plastic clip is all that holds it down tight. If I wanted to, say, upgrade the external cache from the standard 256 KB to the maximum 1 MB--or merely to leave it alone--I would prefer additional support in case the plastic fatigues.
The 31/2 -inch floppy drive has no spring-loaded dust cover,
which I discovered does more than just keep out dust: It also prevents ejected floppy disks from flying across the keyboard. In addition, I discovered a jumper wire connecting two sites on the daughtercard--not something you want to see on any PC, let alone on a Pentium system.
Test results show that the Ambra trailed the Gateway system somewhat on most application benchmarks, and both fell behind the ALR system. Using an ATI VL-Bus graphics accelerator card with the same Mach32 chip set and 2-MB VRAM that the Gateway's PCI card had, the Ambra achieved Windows performance similar to that of the Gateway. In the DOS dBase IV database application test, however, the Ambra just about doubled the performance of the Gateway. The Ambra also led the Gateway slightly in word processing tests.
If it had been available in time, the better selection for this head-to-head comparison might have been the PCI version of this system, which Ambra announced on November 15 of last year. A 60-MHz system with 8 MB of
RAM (upgradable to 128 MB), a 440-MB hard drive, Diamond Viper's PCI graphics accelerator with 2 MB of VRAM, a CD-ROM drive, and a 15-inch flat-square monitor will cost you $3499.
Gateway P5-60
Despite performance that falls behind that of the ALR system, the Gateway P5-60 offers the most features for the price. In addition to its PCI architecture, CD-ROM drive, and extra software, the system also came with the best monitor. The Gateway CrystalScan 1776 LE is a 17-inch monitor offering a 0.26-mm dot pitch, a 32-character LCD panel displaying the current display mode, and Macintosh D-sub and BNC connectors in addition to a standard 15-pin Super VGA connector. This monitor is also the only one of the three with a detachable signal cable.
Inside the heavy-duty tower chassis is an Intel/AMI motherboard with its Pentium chip housed in a ZIF (zero insertion force) socket for future upgradability. An extra front-mounted fan pulls heat off the CPU's heat sink. The P5-60 uses Intel's Pentium/ PCI chi
p set to support three PCI expansion slots in addition to five 16-bit ISA slots; one is a shared ISA/PCI slot. Eight drive bays provide plenty of storage expansion. The ATI PCI video adapter gave the system an edge in drawing lines, rectangles, and ellipses in BYTE's Windows benchmark test.
The Western Digital Caviar 2540 IDE drive, running directly off the motherboard, scored twice as high as the Ambra's Seagate on the BYTE Windows benchmarks' sequential file I/O test, and about 17 percent higher on the random I/O test, although it trailed the Ambra's disk subsystem in the low-level DOS tests. Windows disk performance may have given the Gateway system a slight edge over the Ambra in several of the Windows application tests. Note that the P5-60 supports fast DMA transfers--good for sequential I/O--but the built-in 256-KB cache in the test-model Ambra's SCSI hard drive was double that of the Western Digital IDE drive that came with the P5-60.
The P5-60 produced a low CPU index on the DOS low-leve
l benchmark because of its relatively slow memory system and the considerable weight that is placed on memory performance by the benchmark test. Because of this weighting, a Compaq Deskpro with a 66-MHz 486DX2 actually achieved a higher CPU index than the Gateway Pentium system did.
However, the P5-60's "memory effect" lessened in the Windows low-level memory test and essentially disappeared in the applications tests. In most applications tests, the P5-60 actually had a slight edge over the Ambra, reflecting the relative merits of the systems' hard drive and video subsystems more than memory performance differences.
Like the Ambra, the P5-60 showed a couple of design quirks. The first was a patch wire running a good 6 or 7 inches across the motherboard and indicating a product rushed to market. The second was an overnight language switch, from English to French, of the "Non-System disk or disk error" message you get when there is an unbootable floppy disk in the drive at power-on. Both the Ambr
a and Gateway systems I reviewed were among the first off the production line, and the kinks should disappear by the time you read this.
Performance a Tough Yardstick
What may be most important about my benchmarking of the ALR, Ambra, and Gateway Pentium-60 machines is that, by and large, differences in speed can be attributed more to configuration--the amount of disk cache or VRAM, for example--than to actual motherboard design. But when you factor in the care taken in design and manufacturing in this first wave of relatively low-cost Pentium systems, the choice becomes a bit easier. For high-end graphics or a small file server, I'd opt for peace of mind and go with the more mature ALR Evolution V.
The Facts
Advanced Logic Research, Inc.
(Evolution V)
9401 Jeronimo
Irvine, CA 92718
(714) 581-6770
fax: (714) 581-9240
Ambra Computer Corp.
(Ambra DP60E/VL)
3200 Beechleaf Court
Raleigh, NC 27604
(919) 713-1550
fax: (919) 713-1599
Gateway 2000
(P5-6
0)
610 Gateway Dr.
P.O. Box 2000
North Sioux City, SD 57049
(800) 846-2000
(605) 232-2000
fax: (605) 232-2023
60-MHz Pentium System Features
Gateway wins the features and price war, offering a 17-inch monitor, CD-ROM drive, and PC Tools for under $4000. Although the ALR and Ambra systems come with smaller 15-inch monitors and higher price tags, the ALR Evolution V has a performance-boosting 1-MB caching IDE card and the Ambra has a capable SCSI-2 hard drive. All the reviewed systems have local-bus graphics cards.
Pentium System Features ALR Evolution V
System memory (as tested/max) 16 MB/128 MB
Memory cache (as tested/max) 256 KB/256 KB
Processor-to-memory data width (bits) 64
Expansion bus ISA/VL-Bus
Storage 420-MB Western
Digital Caviar
2420 IDE
Graphics
Western Digital
VL-Bus graphics
accelerator with
1 MB VRAM
Display 15-inch multiscan
color monitor
Other features DOS, Windows
Price as tested $4314
Pentium System Features Ambra DP60E/VL
System memory (as tested/max) 16 MB/64 MB*
Memory cache (as tested/max) 256 KB/1 MB
Processor-to-memory data width (bits) 64
Expansion bus EISA/VL-Bus
Storage 540-MB Seagate
ST3610N SCSI-2
Graphics ATI VL-Bus
graphics accelerator
with 2 MB VRAM
Display
15-inch multiscan
color monitor
Other features DOS, Windows
Price as tested $4399
Pentium System Features Gateway P5-60
System memory (as tested/max) 16 MB/128 MB
Memory cache (as tested/max) 256 KB/256 KB
Processor-to-memory data width (bits) 64
Expansion bus ISA/PCI
Storage 528-MB Western
Digital Caviar
2540 IDE
Graphics ATI PCI graphics
accelerator
with 2 MB VRAM
Display 17-inch multiscan
color monitor
Other features Double-speed CD-
ROM drive, DOS,
Windows, Central
Point Software PC
Tools
Price as tested $3995
* The Ambra DP60E/VL will be expandable to 128 MB when 32-MB SIMMs become available from Ambra Computer.
Photograph: Affordable, full-featured Pentium systems from (left to right) Ambra Computer, Gateway 2000, and Advanced Logic Research.
Illustration: Pentium Performance Benchmarks
The ALR Evolution V provides the best overall applications performance, mainly because of its caching IDE drive card--something you could add to the other systems. However, its good low-level performance gives it an edge in processor-intensive tasks regardless of peripheral configuration. Note the strong floating-point performance of the Pentium systems relative to the 66-MHz 486 Compaq, included for comparison.
Ed Perratore is a BYTE news editor
based in New York. You can contact him on the Internet or BIX at
eperratore@BIX.com
, or on MCI Mail as "eperratore/byte."
Low-Priced Pentium PCs
