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Micron's New PCs Catch the Bus

Fast new Millennia Max systems hit 133-MHz channel speed with Via chip set.

By Tom Spring, PCWorld   

Via Technologies' Apollo Pro133 4X chip set supports a 133-MHz system bus, or the 100-MHz bus that most computers use today. It also supports 4X AGP-enhanced graphics and the faster ATA 66 hard disk standard.

Intel Missed the Bus

Intel had hoped to introduce its 820 chip set on Monday, but delayed its release after finding flaws late last week. The Intel 820 will support system bus speeds of up to 133 MHz, RDRAM memory, 4X AGP graphics, and ATA 66 hard disk technology. Intel and Rambus spent the day acknowledging and explaining a serious glitch that delayed the release of high-end systems from Dell, Gateway, and others.

The Millennia Max 600 is Micron's top-of-the-line PC, starting at $1884. A 600-MHz Pentium III processor powers the system, which ships with 128MB of 133-MHz Virtual Channel SDRAM, a 13.6GB ATA hard disk, an 8X DVD-ROM drive, a 32MB high-end video card from nVidia, and a 17-inch monitor.

Intel proceeded as planned Monday with the launch of a new 810e chip set with integrated sound and graphics aimed at the corporate crowd. The chip set doesn't support Rambus's faster memory or 4X AGP graphics, but it does support a 133-MHz system bus.

On Monday, Micron also unveiled a Millennia Max 533 with the Via 133-MHz bus chip set, priced at $1469 and stoked with a Pentium-533. This system ships with 64MB of memory, a 13.6GB hard disk, a 40X CD-ROM drive, a 16MB nVidia video card, and a 17-inch monitor. It does not include a modem.

Not So Fast

In PC World performance tests of the Millennia Max system, the Millennia Max 600 using the Via Technologies chip set performed much like a Micron PIII-600 using the older 440BX chip set.

This isn't too surprising: Today's productivity apps, including those in PC World's test suite, lean heavily on the CPU's secondary cache to complete tasks quickly. As a result, they don't cry out for more system bus bandwidth or for higher-speed memory.

Micron says its use of the Apollo Pro chip set would have saved Micron customers $200 to $300 over systems with Intel's new 820 chip set and RDRAM, without sacrificing system performance. Company officials have decided the 820 chip set isn't worth the cost until processor speeds and applications require the performance Rambus memory can provide.

Micron intends to use Via Technologies' product as an interim alternative, but says it will use Rambus and Intel chip sets in servers and enterprise desktops in the future.

Yardena Arar contributed to this report.