300-MHz PII And excellent DVD playback, Too...
Zulich, Michael J.
01/01/98
Windows Sources
Page 097
(COPYRIGHT 1998 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company) Copyright 1998 Information Access Company. All rights reserved.
Dell Dimension XPS D300
PROS: Solid components; excellent DVD playback.
CONS: Performance slightly lower than that of the competition.
This is a 300-MHz desktop system with decent performance and excellent DVD playback.
Company: Dell Computer Corp., Austin, TX
Price:With Win NT, $2,684; with Win 95, $2,599
Availability:: Now
OS SUPPORT: Win NT 4.0, Win 95
Phone: 800-388-8542; 512-338-4400
URL: www.dell.com
The growing acceptance of AGP has system vendors introducing new products so rapidly that 6-month-old systems are obsolete. That's the case with Dell and its Dimension XPS D300. This system uses the new AGP-compliant LX chip set and is the first in a series of XPS systems that will replace the H266 product line, with its FX chip set, introduced last April. But there's more to this Dimension than just AGP. It includes a 300-MHz PII and sells for $2,684, loaded with Windows NT 4.0. We tested a shipping system.
Dell is aiming the D300 at the second-time buyer in the small-to-medium-size-business arena. The D300 is equipped with everything this experienced buyer needs, including 64MB of SDRAM, 512K of cache, and an ATX platform with two USB ports on the motherboard. The hard disk is a high-performance, 8.4GB IBM Deskstar DHEA-38451. An STB Velocity 128 board for AGP with 4MB of SGRAM RAM handles the graphics, while a SoundBlaster AWE64 card handles the sound. The system also includes a U.S. Robotics 56K Winmodem. And to confirm Dell's commitment to the forward-thinking buyer, Dell includes a 12X/20X Hitachi GD2000 ATAPI DVD drive teamed with a Quadrant Cinemaster II video controller.
If you need to make the system more enterprise-friendly, you can purchase an optional 3Com PCI 10/100 Ethernet card for $79.
The system had difficulty running our benchmarks. The problems appear to relate to the newness of the graphics board, because the tests ran under Windows 95, only when 2-month-old drivers were loaded. Under Windows NT, the system completed only CPUmark32, (scoring 742, behind NEC's and Hewlett-Packard's powerhouses) and High-End Disk WinMark 98 (achieving a score of 4,710, which beat out NEC's 3,555). As for High-End Winstone 98 and High-End Graphics WinMark 98, the system stalled when calling up Microsoft Access 97. We expect Dell and STB to clear up these problems. In the meantime, you might consider requesting a different graphics board.
Under Windows 95, with system RAM reduced to 32MB, the Dell delivered a Business Graphics WinMark 98 score of 112 and a Business Winstone 98 score of 21.4. These scores are below the PowerMate's Business Graphics WinMark 98 score of 150 and Business Winstone 98 score of 23.7.
Still, we were impressed with the video playback of the Hitachi DVD drive and Cinemaster II combo. The two components delivered broadcast-quality video with no pixelation or distortion, even across a full screen. Moreover, unlike previous versions of the Cinemaster, this one doesn't force you into letterbox mode.
Overall, the Dell Dimension XPS D300 is a decent, if not exceptional, performer whose major selling point is its DVD drive. But considering that NEC's PowerMate Enterprise II delivers greater speed at roughly the same price, it looks like the smarter buy. Even if you don't need all its network support.
The Dimension XPS D300 includes a Hitachi DVD drive and Cinemaster II combination that delivers very good video playback.
Related article: New Benchmarks Make Their Debut
This issue marks the introduction of the latest versions of Ziff-Davis's industry-standard PC benchmarks: Winstone 98 and WinBench 98. The full benchmark suite also includes 3D WinBench 98, which we didn't use this issue. These products are the result of a year of development by the Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation (ZDBOp), the R&D division of Ziff-Davis Publishing.
Like its predecessor, Winstone 97, Winstone 98 breaks down into Business Winstone 98 and High-End Winstone 98. These tests use scripts that exercise both business and high-end applications to produce a relative measure of overall system performance.
Business Winstone 98, which runs on Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95, uses nine top-selling applications in four categories. To test business database/spreadsheet operations, the tests use Microsoft Access 97, Microsoft Excel 97, Lotus 1-2-3 97, and Corel Quattro Pro 7. Under the Business Word Processing category, the applications are Microsoft Word 97 and Corel WordPerfect 7. The Business Publishing segment utilizes CorelDRAW! 7 and Microsoft PowerPoint 97. Netscape Navigator 3.01 is the Business Browser we used for these tests.
This year, Winstone 98 adds a new category that is not part of the overall Business score: Business Task Switching. These tests are designed to demonstrate how well PCs perform when switching between multiple applications. One task-switching test alternates between Word and Excel, while the other switches between CorelDRAW! and WordPerfect.
The High-End Winstone 98 tests, which run only on Windows NT, use seven applications that Windows Sources editors, ZDBOp, and editors from other ZD publications collectively chose because of the range of performance demands these applications place on systems. The applications are: MicroStation 95, Adobe Premiere 4.2, Adobe Photoshop 4.01, AVS/Express 3.1, PV-Wave 6.1, Microsoft FrontPage 97, and Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0.
WinBench 98, which runs on Windows NT and Windows 95, acts as a subsystem-level companion to Winstone 98. This suite of tests provides detailed information about the performance of all of a PC's major subsystems--processor/RAM, graphics, disk, CD-ROM, and full-motion video. Its Graphics WinMark and Disk WinMark tests play back the graphics and disk activities, respectively, of the Winstone 98 application-based tests.
3D WinBench 98 addresses both the performance and rendering-quality questions raised by the latest 3D graphics accelerators. It measures 3D graphics performance using the Windows Direct3D 5.0 API to render 3D scenes similar to those found in games. 3D WinBench 98 also includes a very large 3D-quality verification suite. Each display in this suite demonstrates what a scene rendered correctly for a given feature should look and compares the image with the image the tested accelerator provides. If an accelerator does not implement a feature correctly or adequately, the benchmark can instead use the software Hardware Emulation Layer (HEL) to display all scenes using that feature.
3D WinBench 98 provides an overall score, the 3D WinMark 98, and a variety of individual 3D test scores.
3D WinMark 98's score is a measure of both overall 3D performance and rendering-quality options. The benchmark displays a series of 19 scenes; these scenes exercise the 3D subsystem in much the same way games do. Because most Windows 3D games shipping or under development use Direct3D's Immediate Mode API, 3D WinBench 98 also uses that interface to render its test scenes.
One unavoidable consequence of new benchmark releases is that the results the benchmarks produce also change. Those results are not comparable with the results of any previous benchmarks, not even with the results of an earlier version of the same benchmark.
To get your own free copies of these benchmarks, go to www.winsources.com. |
