Pioneer Power PC
Pioneer Computers have a good reputation for submitting solid, well-built machines at very competitive prices, and this machine was no different. The Power PC features the all-new Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz processor, an Intel D850GB motherboard, and 256MB of RDRAM. There was nothing special about the case; it was of the plain and simple variety. The chassis can hold up to three 5.25in drives and two 3.5in drives. Inside it can hold an additional 3.5in drive (which was taken up by the 40GB IBM hard disk drive). The chassis is strong overall and the case is very easy to open. You only have to remove one panel to get inside, unlike some of the other cases, which required the front and side panels to be removed.
When we had a look inside we found a very neat interior. We also noticed that all the memory banks were used up--Pioneer shipped four 64MB RDRAM modules. We do not know whether this was due to the supply they had of RDRAM but by doing this it does cut down on expandability. Most of the other vendors supplied two 128MB modules and left two banks free. (Note: RDRAM can only be installed in pairs--e.g. 2 x 64, 2 x 128, 2 x 256, or 2 x 512MB). If you have two remaining banks you have to insert RIMM terminators which should come with your RDRAM motherboard.
The Power PC also features a Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM drive and a Mitsubishi Diamond Data 10x/4x/32x CD-RW drive. The Mitsubishi CD-RW drive was a little slow at rewriting. Burning at 10x is reasonably fast--you should be able to burn a 74-minute audio CD in about eight minutes. We did, however, get a lot of other faster alternatives like 12x, 16x and 20x write drives.
The 64MB Leadtek Winfast Geforce 3 graphics card includes an S-video and DVI connector. We were surprised that this machine did score as high as all the AMD machines in Business Graphics and High-End Graphics which tests 2D graphics performance. However, in Quake 3, the Power PC tore apart all the AMD machines and all the other Intel-based machines except for the Xenon machine. In 3D WinBench it managed the highest score. The Power PC performed quite well in Content Creation and Business Winstone but there were faster machines in 2D.
The Power PC also came with a Creative Sound Blaster Live DE 5.1 card coupled with Creative DTT2200 speakers. The speakers are designed to produce six discrete channels when combined with a SoundBlaster Live card. Each of the five speakers were six watts in RMS and the subwoofer was 19 watts in RMS. This setup is excellent for gaming or home theatre speakers. They are, however, not in the same league as the Altec Lansing ADA330 speakers that were supplied by Dell.
The 17in Hitachi CM615U monitor that shipped with the Power PC wasn't too bad. Most of the other vendors shipped with flat screen displays which makes them a little more attractive but also increased the overall price of the PC substantially. The only thing missing from this PC was a modem and network card.
In our CD-R/DVD Playback test the Power PC managed to play our movie and burn a CD. We did notice the movie start and stop for a few seconds at the start of the burn process and at the end. This however did not affect our burn process and we were able to successfully burn the CD.
Pioneer Power PC
Company: Pioneer Computers
Ph: 02 9690 2888
Price: AU$4,390
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