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December 1996 Reviews This Month
By James Alan Miller
Not long ago we were fantasizing about buying a Pentium Pro system for less than $3,000. This month, Gateway 2000 and Pionex join the under-$3,000 club with a pair of Pros. (Last month, we reviewed the Dell Dimension XPS Pro200n, which delivers a 200MHz Pentium Pro CPU with 32MB of EDO RAM, an 8X CD-ROM drive and a massive 3.2GB hard disk for $2,979.)
Gateway 2000's G6-180 Family PC ($2,724) offers a 180MHz Pentium Pro CPU with 256KB of on-chip cache. Pionex's Elite Pentium Pro 200 ($2,999) incorporates a 200MHz Pentium Pro processor.
The Gateway's tower case leaves room for expansion with three empty 5.25-inch external drive bays and six free 3.5-inch bays. The smaller mini-tower design from Pionex provides three 5.25-inch external and just three 3.5-inch internal bays.
Only cosmetic differences distinguish the functionally similar front panels of both units. Each system has reset and power buttons, a floppy drive and an 8X CD-ROM drive-Sony for the Pionex and Toshiba for the Gateway (each with headphone jack and a volume control in the lower left-hand corner).
The Pionex's power button stands out because it is much larger and snaps loudly when pressed; Gateway's power button makes no sound at all, and is easier to press. Removing the Pionex case is easier: It uses large thumbscrews.
The interiors are well-organized, with neatly folded unobtrusive wiring. Each system incorporates the same Intel Pentium Pro ATX-style motherboard and PCI chipset, the 440 FX. Both systems ship with two 16MB modules of EDO RAM for a total of 32MB, expandable to 128MB. The heat sink of each PC's CPU is cooled by a fan attached to the power supply located at the top of the case. You'll find an identical Astec 200-watt power supply, three ISA and three PCI slots, and a shared ISA/PCI slot. There are two PCI slots and two ISA slots available with the Pionex. The Gateway provides two PCI slots, one ISA slot and an empty shared slot.
At the heart of the Pionex video subsystem is a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 ViRGE graphics board with 2MB of EDO RAM and an excellent 17-inch Princeton monitor, the Ultra 70F. The Gateway uses an STB Lightspeed 128 with 2MB of MDRAM and Gateway's own Vivitron 1776 17-inch monitor.
The monitors are the high points of both video systems. Each has a clear, crisp picture, though the nod for quality goes to the Pionex. Its Princeton monitor, with a diagonal viewable area of 16.1 inches, offers on-screen controls, a 0.28-millimeter dot pitch and a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. It is Energy Star, VESA DPMS, MPRII and TCO-92 compliant. Though the Gateway Vivitron controls aren't on-screen, they are comprehensive and easy to use. Its Trinitron CRT has a 16-inch diagonal viewable area with a 0.26mm dot pitch, and matches the Princeton's standards except for TCO-92.
Both systems incorporate Ensoniq wavetable sound boards and Altec Lansing speakers, though the Gateway speakers come with a subwoofer. Both systems are equipped with a 2.5GB Western Digital hard disk.
Our Wintune raw bench-mark CPU tests revealed performance differences between these two powerful systems' processors. Interestingly, both PCs ship with Windows 95 rather than Windows NT, which is a more efficient OS for Pentium Pros. The Pionex 200MHz Pentium Pro earned an excellent score of 419MIPS, slightly better than the 416.67MIPS of the Dell Dimension XPS Pro200n, and more than 40 points higher than the Gateway's 377.33MIPS. The hard disk mark was a superb 4.37MB per second for the Gateway and a good 3.13MBps for the Pionex, both substantially outperforming the Dell's 1.90MBps. However, the Dell produces better video results than either of these systems.
The operating system also affects performance when you compare these two systems' scores with those of the Dell, which runs Windows NT 4.0. The Gateway earned speedy marks of 8.33 seconds for Word and 7.67 seconds for Excel, while the Pionex clocked 8.33 seconds for Word and 7.33 seconds for Excel. But compare those times with the Dell system's spectacular results of 6.67 seconds for Word and 4.0 seconds for Excel. Both the Pionex and the Gateway (especially the Gateway with its slower CPU) would likely improve on their application scores while running under NT.
Though optimized for Windows NT, these Pentium Pros come preloaded with Windows 95 and numerous software titles. The slightly higher cost of today's Pentium Pro (when compared to a Pentium) buys you a pure 32-bit future-our reason for replacing the Gateway 2000 P5-166 FPC and the HP Vectra 500 515MCx 5/166 systems formerly on our Recommended List with these two Pentium Pro systems.
-- Info File --
Gateway 2000 G6-180 Family PC
Price: $2,724
Pros: Performance; expandability
Cons: Need screwdriver to remove cover
Platforms: 3X, 95, NT
Gateway 2000
800-846-2000, 605-232-2000
WinMag Box Score: 3.5
-- Info File --
Pionex Elite Pentium Pro 200
Price: $2,999
Pros: Performance; serviceability
Cons: Documentation
Platforms: 3X, 95, NT
Pionex Technologies
800-357-6203, 908-560-3610
WinMag Box Score: 3.5
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