With the Australian launch of the Intel Pentium 4, we decided it would be a good idea to run a competition to find the fastest system in Australia based on the Intel Pentium 4 processor and retailing under AU$7,000.
To facilitate this competition, the RMIT IT Test Lab designed and maintained a Web site that would let vendors from all over the country submit machine designs and benchmark results for these machines. From these, the Lab took the top five performers and put them head to head for the Challenge reproduced here. The winner of this final competition would be awarded the title Fastest P4 System in Australia.
In the first part of the competition, the vendors had to submit their scores in three benchmarks: 3DMark 2000 v1.1, Quake III (Demo 2), 3D WinBench 2000 v1.1. The objective was to achieve the fastest result across each benchmark category. When the top five systems had been found, they were shipped to the RMIT IT Test Lab for full testing and verification.
To enter the competition, the system had to:
a) contain an Intel Pentium 4 Processor,
b) retail for less than AU$7,000,
c) and include the following minimum specifications:
- 17in or larger monitor,
- a DVD drive,
- a floppy drive
- minimum 15GB hard drive,
- keyboard and mouse,
- sound card and speakers,
- Windows Me operating system (not Windows 2000),
- no overclocking of CPU or graphics card.
A second part of the competition involved asking the general public to register their details along with 75 words or less how they would use Australia's fastest P4 system. The winner of this competition will be announced in next month's issue.
In addition to the standard hardware and software testing, and in light of several recent comments we have received via the buyer-feedback@testlab.rmit.edu.au e-mail address and the letters to the editor, we also decided to have a look at the warranties and the terms and conditions that accompanied each machine. Full copies of the Terms and Conditions (where available) are incuded in the writeups.
| Product | Review | |||
 Alpha Pro 1500 |
Read Review | |||
| AVO Pentium 4 | Read Review | |||
| My Computer | Read Review | |||
| Tornado | Read Review | |||
| Gateway Solo 5300XL Deluxe |
Read Review | |||
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| = Editors' Choice.
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