AMD, Intel PCs Blast to One Gigahertz

Busing Issues

It's also worth noting that the AMD Athlon has a 200-MHz front-side bus--a key data path between the CPU and the system--but thus far 1-GHz Athlon PCs are shipping with 100-MHz SDRAM for main memory, so they're not taking full advantage of the fast bus. Coppermine PIII systems use either 100- or 133-MHz front-side buses. When they use a 133-MHz front-side bus and have the on-die L2 cache, they're designated with the letters EB. Dell's Dimension XPS B-866 has a PIII-866 chip and uses the Intel 820 chip set, which supports a 133-MHz front-side bus, 4X AGP graphics, and ATA-66, an enhanced version of the IDE storage interface that can transfer data at a peak rate of 66 MBps, a step up from the standard 33 MBps.

On our supplemental graphics tests, which include games and CAD and modeling applications, the graphics cards used in the systems played a large role in the results, but main memory and bus speeds also affected performance.

Graphics Grab Bag

One fact quickly became clear during testing: If you're a gaming fan, you should look for a system with DDR memory on the graphics card.

All our systems use graphics cards based on NVidia's GeForce 256 chip set, which provides the most advanced 3D rendering available on PCs, thanks to extra pipelines that shoot pixels and crunch geometric calculations. Dell's system boasts the most graphics power, thanks to its 64MB of DDR SDRAM, which runs significantly faster than standard SDRAM graphics memory. (Compaq will offer a Presario 5900Z-1GHz system with 32MB of DDR graphics memory, but the card in the machine that we tested had 32MB of SDRAM.)

Dell's behemoth ran fastest on most tests, and it won the Caligari TrueSpace 4.2 modeling test by a mile, delivering 28 frames per second while the others topped out at 16 fps. The Dell and Gateway machines did especially well displaying the geometric shapes and high-resolution color screens of games such as Unreal Tournament and Quake III.

The Gateway Select 1000 machine zipped through the AutoCAD 2000 test in the shortest time, presumably because of the 1-GHz Athlon chip's superior processing of floating-point calculations.

The Cost Question

In high-end machines like these, PC vendors throw in all the toys, so costs can quickly add up. All seven of the systems we tested have 19-inch monitors, and all but the 850-MHz Compaq came equipped with 7200-rpm hard drives (now the standard on high-performance desktops).

The Compaq Presario 5900Z-1GHz costs the most at $3799, with a 10X DVD-ROM drive, a combination XDSL and 56-kbps modem, and a 40GB hard drive. IBM's Aptiva S Series GZ checks in at $3498 with a comparable configuration. Compaq sells a similarly loaded Athlon-850 system for $3452.

We also tested the more modestly configured Presario 5900Z-850, which, at $2564, costs $1235 less than the 1-GHz model but has a 20GB hard drive, and a 40X CD-ROM drive instead of a DVD-ROM. Note that the 850-MHz chip alone costs $400 to $500 less than the 1-GHz chip.

Gateway's $3308 Select 1000 Athlon 1-GHz system seems reasonably priced, given its 30GB drive, 8X DVD-ROM drive, and CD-RW drive, and you can cut that figure down to $2999 if you do without the CD-RW and choose less-expensive speakers. Our Gateway Select 850 configuration skips the CD-RW drive and checks in at $2699.

Cybermax's $2499 Enthusiast K7-850 doesn't cut many corners either, what with a 27GB hard drive, a Sony CD-RW drive, and an 8X DVD-ROM drive. Better yet, the Enthusiast has plenty of pep. In our tests, it slightly outperformed the Compaq and Gateway 850s, with a PC WorldBench 2000 score of 153.

Extreme power users may be tempted to absorb the high cost of the $3679 Dell Dimension XPS B-866. This configuration has a 30GB hard drive, a 12X DVD-ROM drive, and a CD-RW drive. Remember, this system runs much like Gateway's 1-GHz Athlon machine on business apps, and it wins most of our graphics tests. For the ultimate in video editing, 3D modeling, and gaming, you want the best graphics card and RAM you can find, if you can swallow the price. But typical PC users will get all the performance they need from a slightly less powerful system like the Gateway Select 850 or Cybermax Enthusiast K7-850, at a price well under $3000.

If you have an equity stake in Amazon.com, check out the 1-GHz PIII system Dell will be selling by the time you read this. Called the Dimension XPS B1000r Special Edition, it will sell for a whopping $5299 with 256MB of RDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, a graphics card with 64MB of DDR memory, a 12X DVD-ROM drive, a CD-RW drive, a V.90 modem, and a 21-inch monitor. A $3999 version has a similar configuration but with 128MB of RDRAM, a 30GB hard drive, and a 19-inch monitor. Supplies are limited, the Dell Web site warns. The company plans to sell lower-priced configurations later in the year, when more 1-GHz chips become available.