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The New Speed Kings: 350- and 400-MHz Pentium IIs

This time it's not just penny-ante performance gains. Pentium II-350s and 400s cruise 20 percent faster than their 333-MHz siblings. And many are priced to go: Witness HP's Vectra VL Series 8, a $2750 Pentium II-400.

  

We've seen a lot of CPU introductions here on the Top 100 staff. So when yet another "fastest ever" CPU makes its debut, we're not prone to breathless endorsements. If anything, we've become downright cynical. Our tests typically show that faster CPUs fail to deliver a proportionate increase in performance--a real disappointment given the stiff premium these systems usually carry.

This time, it's different. Following up our cover story in June about the first PCs based on Intel's new 350- and 400-MHz chips (see "400-MHz Pentium IIs: The Great Leap Forward"), this month we reviewed eight of these machines for the Top 20. The huge gains these new PCs--particularly the PII-400 models--offer over the previous standard bearer, the Pentium II-333s, are so striking they almost sweep our Top 20 Power Desktops chart by claiming four of the five Best Buys, a first-time event. Our new number one power machine is Gateway's GP6-400, a $2913 network card­equipped PII-400.

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