#New Alpha PCs?
4 messages in this thread
More on the ideal 3DS system election issue. Any of you have give a
look to the new DEC PCs? A 3 ISA and 3 PCI slots box powered by a
486DX2/66, Pentium or Alpha card hooked by a 64bit bus to the memory
(up to 192MB) and the rest of the system. Just have see it in the
last PC World issue. It sound to good for me. Buy a real
"64bit-bused" Pentium (for around $4500, including 15" monitor, 340MB
SCSI-2 HD, CD ROM and 8MB) and have the opportunity to change in a
year or two (when the Yosters come with that NT 3ds <g>) to a full
Alpha AXP for "just" $1199 -price now, expect prices to go down in
all that time squeezing the Pentium). Anybody have seen it in Comdex?
The article say that it's available now.
Seems to me as an ideal evolution path.
(uhh, and just make the price calculation WITHOUT all the additional
stuff, like the CD-ROM and the monitor)
ana /krazy images
ps.Hey, and what about that new Matrox MGA2 for the PCI bus? I just
have recieved some brochures today. It will be for $999 for the
highest model. Nice combo, isn't it?
The DEC does sound like a great solution. Thanks for the post.
What's the bottom line, real-world advantage of the PCI bus for video?
I read an article in Byte about PCI, VESA, VESA 2, and it sounded
like for video the VLB is still faster, but I'm not sure I understood
the article fully. It mentioned that PCI info must still travel over
a bridge, and VLB is a direct pipeline to the CPU.
I have read the article too, as well as one in PC World. It seems to
me that PCI is sightly faster than VLB. Anyway, don't look just the
speed. I think that both give enough speed for today needs. Look at
the other features of PCI: processor independent and automatic
configuration are the keys for PCI success. And add that the main
manufacturers (IBM, DEC, COMPAQ, AST, DELL) are behind it. In fact,
systems are shipping right now. BTW, it seems that Intel is selling
the PCI chip set for $15.
Anyway, let's wait a couple of months and see. Dell, DEC, AST and IBM
have their products in the market now. In my opinion, Compaq is about
to jump with a PCI/Triflex combo for the new line of highend desktop
computers. However, the 486-Pentium-Alpha upgrade path of the DEC
seems like heaven to me 🙂
I have to agree that it seems the big boys are all lining up behind
PCI, but that doesn't always mean it's better. Although I prefer
putting my systems together myself, based on the AMI EISA
motherboards (which sometimes causes more headaches than it's
worth… ), the DEC sounds like a real winner and could change my
mind.