We review some of the fastest desktop PCs around--all with processor running at 1.3GHz or better. Both Intel and AMD PCs are featured, and we take a close look at the role of memory in overall performance.
For this months feature we reviewed some of the fastest desktop PCs around. These machines make awesome games and multimedia PCs but they can also be used as high-end business PCs as well as for video editing and processing.
We asked vendors to submit PCs with a 1.3GHz CPU (minimum, either AMD or Intel). We also asked for each of the PCs to ship with 256MB of SDRAM, a hard drive with a capacity of at least 40GB, a DVD-ROM drive, a CD-RW drive, and a 17in (or bigger) monitor.
The majority of PCs we received were Intel machines. Most of them shipped with 1.7GHz processors We also got our first look at a 1.4GHz AMD processor, which proved to be a big winner. We also received two varieties of RAM. Some of the machines came with RDRAM and others shipped with DDR-RAM. None of the machines arrived with SDRAM. RAM plays a major role in improving the overall performance of your PC. Faster RAM and additional memory allow you to open more applications simultaneously while providing the power needed to make them run quickly. There are a couple of different types of RAM. Synchronous DRAM uses a clock on the chip to synchronise signal input and output. The clock is synchronised with the CPU so that the timing of the memory chips and the timing of the CPU are "in sync". DDR (double data rate) SDRAM is a new memory technology derived from SDRAM. The benefit of DDR memory is its ability to perform two data operations in one clock cycle--thus providing twice the throughput of SDRAM. Rambus (RDRAM), on the other hand, offers a series of advantages including higher bandwidth and lower power consumption then SDRAM and DDR-RAM.
We ran all the standard Ziff Davis-based tests on all the machines, as well as MadOnion's 3DMark and Quake 3, and we also tested the memory bandwidth of all the different types of RAM using SiSoft Sandra 2001. As we had predicted, all the machines with RDRAM generated the highest scores then followed DDR-RAM- and SDRAM-based machines.
We should point out, however, that more bandwidth is not necessarily a benefit. It depends on how much traffic you have now and how much you expect. Both RDRAM and DDR-RAM have lousy latency. At the moment memory is a fair bit slower than the processor (that's why we have things like L2 caches). Both RDRAM and DDR-RAM handle data flow differently. RDRAM does a little very quickly. DDR-RAM does much more but much more slowly. The two types of RAM have been roughly equivalent up to now. Increases in bandwidth/FSB alone show little proportionate improvement to overall computer performance scale very low in overall computer performance compared to items such as the processor.
| Product | Review | |||
| How We Tested | Read Review | |||
| Dell Dimension 8100 | Read Review | |||
| Digital Star IntelliPro BTS 2000 PC | Read Review | |||
| e@Pc Annihilator Series 7 | Read Review | |||
| Gateway Performance 1700XL | Read Review | |||
| Hallmark eXtrema 75M | Read Review | |||
 Peripherals Plus AXIS 1400XM |
Read Review | |||
| Pioneer Power PC | Read Review | |||
| Total Peripherals Group TPG Hercules | Read Review | |||
| Westan ArmaPro P4 | Read Review | |||
| Metro 860 Multimedia PC | Read Review | |||
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| = Editors' Choice.
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