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Top 10 Midrange PCs

Three chart arrivals, three chip makers: Newcomers carry CPUs and chip sets by AMD, Intel, and Via.

  

Tech Trend: Memory Matters

Memory improves either by evolution or by revolution, according to Avo Kanadjian, senior vice president of memory marketing at Samsung. PC-133 SDRAM (like its proprietary cousin, VC-133 SDRAM from NEC) follows PC-100 and PC-66 as the next evolutionary step in synchronous dynamic random access memory. This new type of RAM can be seen inside two of the systems on our midrange chart, such as our top-ranked Micro Express MicroFlex-55B, and IBM's eighth-place PC 300GL PIII-600.

Dean Hays, director of marketing at Via Technology, says that although PC-133 SDRAM will support a higher frequency than PC-100--and is therefore faster--it won't quite achieve the four-to-three increase the rating numbers imply. It will, however, represent only an incremental improvement--not a breakthrough advance.

The next revolutionary step will be the RamBus, which has a completely different architecture and interface and, according to Intel, should run twice as fast as PC-100 memory. "We have a number of customers who prefer an evolutionary step at this time," Kanadjian says. "PC-133 could be viewed as an eventual replacement for PC-100 the way that PC-100 replaced PC-66," Kanadjian says. At least until RamBus works its way into the motherboards of the masses.

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