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Technology Stocks : IDTI - an IC Play on Growth Markets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Woody_Nickels who wrote (7585)	3/28/1998 11:46:00 AM
From: Hippieslayer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11555

Here's a review I pulled off of the Centaur site. Keep in mind that this guy isn't comparing the C6 to a Pentium but to a Pentium Pro! A review of IDT WinChip by Rich Schinnell I received the computer all set-up with Windows95 on Wednesday the 8th of October. Unpacked and set it up in my home computer room alongside all the other Adult toys. This is what I received: Holco Shuttle 565 Motherboard: Socket 7 with 200MHZ IDT WinChip Intel 430 TX Chip Set Award 4.5x BIOS (Dated September 19th, 1997) 512 KB Level 1 Cache 32 MB EDO DRAM 60 ns Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (S3 Virge) w/2MB EDO DRAM, driver 4.03.00.3211. Western Digital Caviar 1.6 GB IDE Hard Disk Samsung 24x CD-ROM ESS 1768 PNP Sound Card 1.44 MB floppy Baby AT Case w/230 Watt Power Supply Windows 95 OSR/2 installed on the hard disk using FAT 32. It was completely set-up and ready to run, once I had plugged in my monitor, keyboard. speakers and mouse. I was thinking of running bench marks of the IDT WinChip C6 200 vs the Pentium Pro 200 or my Pentium 90. but decided that it would only give me a bunch of numbers which would not mean much and there is already lots of really technical stuff being published. I personally find most of it boring, as I am one that really wants to do work on the computer. And of course a little playing. I decided instead to install some of my normal applications software like Corel Suite 8 and Microsoft Office 97, Internet Dial Up, Netscape and MS Internet Explorer WWW browsers and my mail client Eudora Pror. All I could throw at it installed without a hitch and each appeared to work as well as they do on my PP200. One of the biggest bottlenecks in most computers are in three areas: Hard disk access times, Graphic adapter speed and the nut that's holding the keyboard, once you have a fast processor and the IDT WinChip is one fast processor. After all the software that I normally use was installed, I wanted to check out how the system would react to new devices so I then installed an Intel PCI Ethernet card without any pains (translation Aggravation) and it worked perfectly. I also installed a IOMEGA ATAPI/IDE 100Megabyte removable drive. Piece of cake. That's one of the things that I like about Windows95, it recognizes them easily and installs needed drivers with a minimum of aggravation. Now Windows NT 4.0, that's another story regarding compatibility and ease of adding strange devices. The company that put this system together for IDT was smart enough to copy all the Windows95 files to a WIN95 sub directory on the hard disk to save me the work of inserting the Windows95 CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive. Great option, it sure makes it easier to change system options and install new devices. (What they did was to copy all the files from the MS Windows95 CDROM \WIN95 directory into a sub directory on the hard disk with the name \WIN95). Great little trick. When it asks for the Windows CD-ROM, I only have to change the location box to the C:\WIN95 directory instead of finding and inserting the Windows95 CD-ROM. Everything that I could run or execute on the machine showed the IDT WinChip to be comparable to a my Pentium Pro 200 machine, except is noticeably faster than my Pentium 90 or 133. I ran Data base and communications programs along with Word Processor and Internet clients. I did not bench mark running them to the tenths of a second but I will say this, the IDT WinChip 200s time was almost identical in re-indexing a huge dBASE III file. For most everything I could run, I could not tell the difference between my PP200 and the IDT WinChip 200. I know that there has to be some mathematical speed difference but the main use of the FPU is in my estimation and experience, a function that not many of us know when it comes into play. I reformatted WordPerfect and MS Word documents and did all the little things that I normally do and I could not see any noticeably differences between the IDT WinChip and the Pentium Pro 200. I ran a test where I turned the power off and removed the fan assembly from the top of the chip and placed my hand on the chip, it was cool to the touch. I then turned the power on but it got too hot to touch in about 5 seconds. I highly recommend that you not try to run one without the fan connected as it could damage the chip beyond repair. That has always been one thing that bothered me about CPU fans, they should have some kind of interlock with the BIOS that prevents booting without the fan operating. I could probably snow many of you by using the Ziff Davis Winbench or Winstone bench marking program scores, but what would that prove? A source of bench marks and more technical information can be seen on the WWW at: sysdoc.pair.com More information from Centaur Technology (They designed the chip) can be obtained at: winchip.com Hint!, this chip compares quite favorably to its competitors, except in the FPU area. Beats them to heck in the power consumption and size statistics. cThe "Mine is Bigger than Yours" syndrome still prevails in the personal computer arena. So those of you that delight in the Winstones and Winbench values can visit the Websites above. Conclusion: With the price of the Intel Pentium 200MHZ MMX at around $200, and if the IDT WinChip sells below $150 , it will be well worth picking the IDT WinChip C6 200MHZ CPU for non FPU intensive use. . As a small business consultant, I would not hesitate in recommending the purchase of computers using the IDT WinChip 200 MHZ C6 for my clients. Rich Schinnell is the 1st vice president of 5000 member Capital PC User Group, having retired from the USN and Vitro corporation and is now consulting for small business's. Rich has been writing a monthly advice and product review column for the Capital PC User Groups award winning Monitor magazine since the 80's. He has his own web page at: cpcug.org and can be E-mailed at schinnel@cpcug.org. Phone calls in the evening (301) 949-9292, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST for those who might be Internet challenged. He enjoys helping users with their problems, even though with Windows95 problems, it is similar to conducting brain surgery over the telephone. He does not presently have any financial interest in or own stock in Intel, AMD, Cyrix or IDT. 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