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[ Go to February 1997 Table of Contents ]
NT Enterprise
Thanks to powerhouse processors like Intel's Pentium Pro and Digital's Alpha, Windows NT is finally finding a home on the desktop. For the "Intel Inside" crowd, the Compaq Professional Workstation is a family of Pentium Pro systems optimized for NT 4.0. Compaq is targeting three market segments for this workstation line: computer-aided design (CAD), financial applications and interactive-content development. All of the models include one or two 200MHz Pentium Pro processors, NT Workstation 4.0, an ultrawide SCSI controller, up to 512MB of ECC DIMM (Error-Correcting Code, dual in-line memory module) memory, an 8X CD-ROM drive and a network-interface card that supports 10Mbps or 100Mbps Ethernet. Compaq's 2-D graphics-oriented models include a Matrox Millennium accelerator card with 2MB of WRAM (expandable to 8MB) and up to 1600X1280 resolution at 256 colors, up to 64MB of system memory and a hard drive as large as 4GB. The 3-D graphics-oriented systems come with an ELSA Gloria-L graphics controller, consisting of a 3-D graphics accelerator, 8MB of DRAM (upgradable to 16MB maximum) and 8MB of VRAM; one or two Pentium Pros; up to 128MB of standard memory; and a 4GB hard drive. Prices for 2-D systems start at $4,300: 3-D systems start at $8,200. If you long for the power of NT RISC, read on: Desk-Station Technology has smashed the $5,000 price barrier with an NT workstation powered by a 500MHz (you read it right) Digital Alpha microprocessor. The new system is part of DeskStation Rebel AVL, a new line of workstations that include either a 366MHz, 433MHz or 500MHz Alpha microprocessor. They also include 1MB cache, 32MB of RAM, a 1.6GB hard drive, 8X CD-ROM, VGA graphics with 2MB memory, two 32-bit and two 64-bit PCI slots, two ISA slots and Windows NT 4.0. The Rebel AVL starts at $3,995 for the 366MHz system, $4,250 for the 433MHz system and $4,995 for the 500MHz system. Starts at $4,300
Starts at $3,995
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