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By Art Brieva
Buying a new computer is always exciting. But it can be frustrating when just a few months later, your once-state-of-the art system is rendered a has-been by a newly introduced processor.
The Venturis FX design engineers had two things in mind: easy maintenance and reliability. You can get inside the system by loosening a single thumbscrew. The entire motherboard slides in and out on rails.
With only one PCI full-length slot, one ISA half-length slot and one shared PCI/ISA full-length slot available, expansion is limited in the Slimline version of the Venturis FX. If you need to add more disk storage, one 5.25-inch bay is available. Included software is a choice of Win95, Windows for Workgroups or NT. Since Digital has positioned this box for business customers and has supplied network-related tools, the company also should have provided a network connection on the motherboard.
On our WINDOWS Magazine Wintune 95 benchmarks, the Venturis posted respectable, if not barn-burning scores: 245MIPS and 12MPixels per second on the video. There was an anomaly in the uncached disk score, so I'm unable to report it. Average times to execute our 32-bit Word and Excel benchmarks were 31 and 19 seconds, respectively. Overall, the system performs well.
My system as tested came with 16MB of EDO RAM. Memory is expandable in single slots to 192MB. It has 256KB of pipeline-burst level 2 cache, an S3 Tri 64V+ graphics adapter with 1MB of EDO RAM, a 1.6GB Western Digital hard drive and a Toshiba 6X CD-ROM drive.
Digital's new Venturis FX has all the qualities of a reliable workhorse that's competitive in price/performance. You may be able to find a slightly cheaper box, but this is a solid choice for corporate use.
Info File
Digital Venturis FX 5133
Price: $2,018
Pros: Ease of service/maintenance
Cons: Slow video
Platforms: Windows 95, 3.1x, NT
RAM: 16MB
Digital Equipment Corp.
800-388-8888, 415-528-6000
WinMag Box Score: 3.5
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