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Abel, Amee
06/01/98
Computer Shopper
Page 336
(COPYRIGHT 1998 Ziff Davis Publishing Company) Copyright 1998 Information Access Company. All rights reserved.
The PRH-333 Home Pro PC proves a potent DVD system that's easy enough for a novice computer user to enjoy
MidWest Micro has long been a popular direct PC supplier. With the powerful PRH-333 Home Pro PC, it's easy to see why. This system combines good performance with easy setup, copious support, and a competitive price.
The PRH-333 gives great multimedia. Starting with a powerful 333MHz Pentium II processor and 64MB of SDRAM, the system includes a Velocity 128 AGP video adapter, a DVD -ROM drive with a CoolDVD decoder card, a 17-inch monitor, and a set of Altec Lansing powered bookshelf speakers with a 40-watt subwoofer. Though one might wish for a 32-bit audio card, the system's 16-bit Sound Blaster AWE 64 did its job decently.
For online play, the system provides a K56flex-compatible fax modem with speakerphone. (Remember--on these modems, you only get 56Kbps downloads, and that only on the very best of phone connections. More typically, these modems connect at speeds between 28.8Kbps and 33.6Kbps.)
Inside the system's seven-bay (two internal, five accessible) minitower case, Intel Corp.'s latest "Deschutes" 0.25-micron core Pentium II processor operates at 333MHz. This ultrafine circuit printing benefits consumers by bringing down processor manufacturing costs and lowering processor voltage requirements, thus allowing the chip to run cooler.
The processor's single-edge-connector cartridge design contains 512K of pipeline-burst L2 cache. A Microstar MS-6117 ATX-style motherboard with 64MB of SDRAM holds the processor and a 440LX chip set. In our review system, two of the board's three DIMM slots were occupied. The motherboard offers a lavish assortment of expansion connectors: one AGP, five PCI, and two ISA with one of the PCI and ISA connectors sharing a slot. The system came with the STB Velocity 128 graphics adapter in the AGP slot, the CoolDVD decoder card in one PCI slot, and both ISA slots occupied by the modem and the Sound Blaster AWE 64 card.
The system turned in a fast score of 22.5 on our Business Winstone 98 test of overall system performance, 12 percent faster than our benchmark system. We expected an increase in keeping with the 20 percent improvement of the processor and graphics subsystems, but the PRH-333's 8.4GB Quantum Fireball SE Ultra DMA hard drive simply wasn't as fast as our benchmark system's drive. Since both systems are running the same STB Velocity 128 AGP graphics card, we attribute the PRH-333's faster video performance to the system processor, increased system memory, and improved STB video drivers.
STB's Velocity 128 card uses the nVidia Riva 128 chip and comes with 4MB of SGRAM, but doesn't include a video-out port in its AGP configuration. The card implements the AGP specification in 1x mode (at 66MHz, twice the speed of the PCI bus) and provides for pipeline memory reads. As demonstrated both by the 3D Graphics WinMark test and informal game playing, the card provides decent performance and a fast implementation of Direct3D.
The card is paired with a MidWest Micro 17-inch DJ702 monitor manufactured by Mag Innovision Co. This slightly older monitor offers an easy-to-use onscreen display (OSD) and a high 85Hz vertical refresh rate at 1,024x768 resolution. The image is clear and bright with a dot pitch of 0.26mm. On our video playback benchmarks, performance was good, but not great; the image was a little blocky.
We did have some trouble getting the monitor and the Velocity 128 card to work together. The current (version 1.32) revision of STB's driver had trouble interpreting the plug-and-play signals from the monitor. After two days of help from MidWest Micro and STB, the problem was resolved by configuring the system for a different monitor. STB acknowledges that it is working on a new driver to address this situation (which will probably be available by the time you read this).
DVD promises hot games and crisp video images. MidWest Micro doesn't disappoint, packing two DVD games (Spycraft: The Great Game and The Daedalus Encounter) with the system so you can appreciate just how cool your new computer is. The installed Toshiba SD-M1102 DVD -ROM drive, a second-generation offering from Toshiba, scored as well on our CD-ROM WinBench as some 24x CD-ROM drives have. E4's CoolDVD Lite decoder card, based on Chromatic Research's Mpact media processor, provides MPEG-1 and 2 and Dolby AC-3 decoding.
MidWest Micro (like Gateway 2000 and Micron Electronics) has selected a decoder card that plays only to your monitor. If you plan to use this system with your TV, you'll want to take E4 up on its upgrade program that allows you to swap your Lite board and $99 for a fully featured CoolDVD card.
Interfacing with the PRH-333 is quite comfortable, thanks to its Microsoft Natural Elite Keyboard and IntelliMouse (the one with the wheel). Input/output is up to snuff as well; the system includes two USB ports, two PS/2 ports, an ECP/EPP parallel port, and two serial ports.
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