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By Marck Spiwak
Most people simply can't afford to go out and buy the very best PC in town-they must compromise between price and performance. If you're unwilling to concede too much on performance, consider CompuTrend's Premio HX-6x166. Powered by a Cyrix 6x86-P166+ processor, this inexpensive system beats out 166MHz Pentium-powered systems for some applications.
The Premio system I tested came configured in desktop form with 16MB of EDO RAM, 512KB of pipeline-burst cache, a 1.2GB Quantum Fireball hard drive, an Acer 8X CD-ROM drive, ATI's Video Xpression graphics accelerator, a 15-inch monitor, a sound card and speakers. You get all that for only $1,699. About the only thing missing was a modem, and the no-name mouse's performance was disappointing-but this is really nitpicking. Also, the only software is Windows 95 on a CD-ROM.
Minor quibbling aside, it's hard to find fault with this Cyrix-based system. The system scored 257MIPS on the Wintune CPU test, which would indicate that it's about as fast as a 133MHz Pentium, but it performs like a P166. Average scores for our Word and Excel macros of 15 and 11 seconds, respectively, show it's faster than many 166MHz Pentium systems.
The 8X CD-ROM drive transferred an average of 1.15MB per second, which is only a tick slower than the 8X spec, but it did that with only 16 percent CPU usage. The drive had an average access time of 203 milliseconds. The 15-inch Premio monitor has a full set of controls and, while nothing special, is certainly adequate for a budget-minded system.
The desktop case takes a minute or so to open, and you need a good old-fashioned screwdriver to do so. Inside the case is a Premio motherboard with an Intel chipset and plenty of expansion slots, but not much room for long cards. There are four ISA slots and four PCI slots, but only one slot in each group can accommodate a full-length card. The other slots are blocked to a degree by heat sinks, a CPU fan and cache memory. One pair of slots shares a bracket space on the back.
I was most impressed with the system's graphics capabilities, its software MPEG playback in particular. The ATI Video Xpression allowed me to watch Video CD movies full-screen, with good picture quality.
In short, this system will do just about anything you might need, and for a very reasonable price. You just have to bring your own software.
--Info File--
CompuTrend Premio HX-6x166
Price: $1,699
Pros: Fast, inexpensive
Cons: No bundled software, no modem
Platforms: 3x, 95, NT
CompuTrend Systems
800-677-6477, 818-333-5121
WinMag Box Score 3.5
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