Double Feature

Inside the PII-450

Unlike the PII-400, the PII-450 processor isn't a great leap forward. As you may recall, PII-400 and PII-350 systems wowed us when they debuted in May. Armed with the new BX chip set, these PII systems combined a swift processor with a fast 100-MHz system bus (compared to the previous 66-MHz bus) and speedy memory. The PII-450 uses that same 100-MHz bus and memory, and offers only a slight uptick in clock speed.

All four PII-450 systems we tested had 64MB of system RAM and 8MB of graphics memory. The $2675 Compaq Deskpro EP Model 6450 and $2890 HP Vectra VL Series 8 HE target corporate buyers. Dell's $2629 Dimension XPS R450 is designed for homes and small businesses, whereas the $2849 Gateway G6-450 is configured as a high-end home PC. (The Compaq and Gateway systems we looked at were shipping units; the HP and Dell PCs were preproduction units.)

Are these PCs worth the money? Based on our testing, today's business applications don't cry out for a PII-450. On average, the PII-450s performed only 8 percent faster than comparable PII-400s on our PC WorldBench 98 tests. The fastest PII-450, HP's Vectra VL Series 8 HE, ran 9 percent faster than the average PII-400--an unnoticeable tempo change in an application like Word or Excel. Among the four PII-450 system scores, we saw an insignificant 3 percent variation, from the HP's 216 to the Dell's 210.

Of course, if you spend a lot of time working with demanding, graphics-intensive programs, a PII-450 desktop with a top-notch graphics card may be the right choice. Almost no difference existed between PII-450 and PII-400 machines in our PowerPoint 97 test, which involves building a presentation. But on tougher graphics tasks, the HP and Compaq PII-450 PCs stood out.

In the Macromedia Director 6 test, where we play an AVI movie clip while running an animation in the foreground, the HP and Compaq systems achieved a rate of 99 frames per second--9 percent faster than the average PII-400 score of 91 fps. An improvement of this magnitude is observable in the playback: The faster the frame rate is, the smoother the animation looks.

One technical note: Due to certain conflicts between the Matrox Millennium G200 card, Microsoft DirectX, and Caligari TrueSpace3, we were unable to complete our TrueSpace3 test for the HP and Compaq machines. But these systems are quite capable of running the application.

Finally, the Compaq and HP PCs performed well with games. In our Redline Racer game test, for instance, the HP PII-450 outstripped our fastest PII-400 PC's score by 26 percent. But these results were due in large part to the impressive Millennium G200 graphics card that these machines use.

In contrast, the Gateway and the Dell PII-450s performed more on par with PII-400 machines on our graphics tests: Both are equipped with the STB Velocity 128zx graphics card, which couldn't equal the Millennium G200.

So if you want a PII-450 system, the Compaq and HP PCs offer the most graphics power. The Compaq costs $215 less than the HP and carries a larger hard drive, but the HP includes a LAN adapter card. The home-oriented Dell and Gateway units both include a DVD-ROM drive. The Dell costs $220 less than the Gateway, but it comes with a 17-inch monitor, compared to the Gateway's 19-incher. (For details, see the features comparison chart.)