The Fastest Box on the Block

Jason K. Krause

Digital Equipment's Alpha chip is not just for servers anymore, though it is still not your typical desktop processor. The latest 21164 processor can run at 600 MHz, roughly twice the speed of most competitors' chips. The typical user won't need this kind of speed to run Microsoft Office or read e-mail, but this level of processing power promises to push high-end graphics or database applications to new heights.

I looked at a Polywell PolyAlpha PC running the new 600-MHz chip with a 2-MB L3 cache, 128 MB of RAM, a 4.5-GB Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drive, and a 4-MB Matrox Millennium PCI graphics card. This configuration costs $10,661, though most users will probably o pt for a more powerful graphics card, should they use this system for animation, 3-D re ndering, and such graphics applications.

The system runs either Unix or Windows NT. Unix systems have been shipping since July, but the system I saw is among the first running NT. I ran the native Alpha BYTEmark benchmark on this system (see the Bits article "A Chip Off the Old Block"), which tests the raw processing power of the CPU, and got the highest numbers from any NT desktop system we've tested to date.

If over $10,000 is excessive for this kind of processing power, a 533-MHz system will cost $4300 less, and the 500-MHz Alpha system will cost $5200 less. The price of the 21164 chip will eventually come down, and the price of the system with it, but for now, this is likely the most screaming processor on the market.

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Where to Find

PolyAlpha PC............................$10,661

Polywell Computers
South San Francisco, CA
Phone:    800-999-1278
Phone:    415-583-7222
Internet: 
http://www.polywell.com

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Not Just for Servers Anymore

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