After this first edition, I was VERY pleased to receive an e-mail from the MD of Roxfield Computers as well as an updated pricelist, his company doesn't sell 800 Mhz anymore (I think so!!). Moreover, on Tuesday, C&C issued another ad which convinced me to rewrite the whole article over again. 

First of all, I am in no way related to any of the companies in this test and at no time have I talked or been in contact with any employee of these 3 companies (other than by e-mail). I have made my tests through information and successive deductions (they might be wrong but I don't think so) based on the adverts in the press (OR sent by e-mail) found in

- Le Mauricien of 21^st July 2000 - Microsys : 48A, Mere barthelemy St. Port-Louis, [email protected]
- Email of 26^th July 2000 - Roxfield Computers : Royal Rd, Pamplemousses, [email protected]
- Express of 25^th July 2000 - Cash and Carry : Ground Floor, Shopping Complex, Q-Bornes

Return to the future 4

4 Systems are being reviewed and beforehand, we can say that they ALL provide with a whole lot of power for the demanded money. Less than Rs 30,000 for a Pentium 3 800 Mhz fully equipped is quite a feat by any means. Many of you might remember that in the old days circa Dec.1995 when you could only buy a first Pentium(I) 60mhz with 4 Mb of Memory and a 420 Mb Hard disk, no Modem, no CD-ROM... OK, Roxfield has 4 systems being reviewed. A thumb up to Roxfield Computers for being the very first Company to advertise AMD’s Athlon CPU in Mauritius... Microsys & C&C Computers have a 800 Mhz.

Show me the Way
800 Mhz seems to be the defacto CPU powerering any system in Mauritius. 800 Mhz IS big. You will not find any shrink wrap software, (except Scientific and Imaging ones) which will use that much power. At 800 Mhz other component play a more critical role than the CPU itself. Try using Photoshop on a P3-800 with 32 Mb Memory to test for yourself. 
        2 types of 800 Mhz systems are present. AMD Athlon 800 Mhz and Intel Pentium 3 "Coppermine EB" 800 Mhz. C&C, Roxfield & Microsys Pentium 3 run at 800 Mhz on a 133 Mhz Bus (6*133) while Roxfield Athlon sports a healthy 800 Mhz. Deciding on the most powerful CPU is very tricky indeed. It depends what you are doing with it, it depends what software you are using. Quake 3 is optimised for Pentium 3 SSE+SIMD instructions as well as Photoshop. Winamp and other MP3 encoding software will love the Athlon since its FPU (the pure calculating part of the CPU... getting more complex isn't it...) is more powerful than even the latest P3.
        As always, I would like to mention the fact that the Megahertz Race is nothing more than Mere Marketing. More Megahertz won’t mean quicker typing or more exciting web experience (Intel Pentium III slogan)... The black Spot of all the systems (as it is the case for 99% of PC’s in Mauritius) is that they are based on integrated Motherboards, PC Chips motherboards in this case. While they reduce considerably the price of the system, they are known for their unstability and for being un-upgradable (click here for more). PC Chips is the world’s largest manufacturer of Motherboard churning out more than 1 million motherboards monthly!!! This shouldn’t matter if you destine your system for simple things like word processing and Internet Browsing and if you’re not concerned about upgrading your system soon. Motherboard used are

1. C&C, Intel Pentium 3 - PC Chips M754 LMR with ALI Aladdin Chipset

2. Roxfield uses a PC Chips M800LMR for its AMD system (VIA Chipset)

3. Microsys is built around a PC Chips M770 LMRT (Intel i810e) motherboard,

Below are what hardware specialists call benchmarks. Benchmarks are like Races. The system components are tested under stress. 5 tests were performed. Bear in mind that the benchmarks are only for the CPU and that they serve only as a guide. 



CPU 3DMarks Benchmark
This benchmark included into 3Dmark2000 shows theoretical CPU performance in typical gaming 3D scenes when SSE and 3DNow! SIMD instructions are applied very actively. As you can see, Intel Pentium III is undoubtedly the first here, however, it is very likely to be connected with a more enhanced L2 cache of the CPU rather than with a better implementation of SIMD instructions.



CPU Mark99 Benchmark
This test shows the performance of the CPU integer unit and data processing speed. Both CPUs fare similarly as you can see. For the connoisseur, one must remember that the Cache for First generation Athlon 800 is off chip and running at 2/5 CPU speed but is 512 K in amount while P3 EB cache is Onchip (running at 800 Mhz) but only 256 Kb in size. 



FPU Winmark
This benchmark shows "pure" performance of the arithmetic coprocessor, since all the data it needs can fit into L1 cache of the CPU. According to the results obtained, as said before the Athlon 800 is better than the latest P3 800EB at this game.



Quake 3 benchmark at 1024*768*32 bit color
NB This benchmark was done using Geforce 2 GTS, YOU will not achieve these resolutions otherwise. Not much separates the CPU as you can see.
 


ZD Content Creation
And now we are starting the real applications. According to Content Creation Winstone 2000, AMD CPU manage to leave their Intel rivals a bit behind. Content creation benchmark use real version of software like Adobe Premiere, SoundFroge, Photoshop etc.



Sysmark 2000
This benchmark is also based on office applications to test the CPU performance. But SYSmark 2000 contains the applications, where Intel CPUs have always been better than those from AMD. There are two main reasons for that. Firstly, SSE support is better implemented in Intel processors and secondly, Intel CPUs work much more efficiently with L2 cache (since the L2 is off chip for the former... ).


Athlon and Pentium3 are more or less equal on benchmarks and any difference shall not be felt by the user! Bear in mind that these benchmarks are only indicative and depends on many things particularly the type of memory used, the chipset, the motherboard and the video card used and that the tests were done on latest chipsets not Via, SIS or i810e. 

For your Eyes Only
Roxfield AMD Athlon Computer uses SIS300 graphic video CARD (not embedded in the Chipset), while both the P3-800 Roxfield System & C&C uses Riva TNT2 and Microsys handles an Intel i752 graphics accelerator. So here C&C wins the speed crown as for speed. The Riva TNT2 is an M64 TNT2 version which is the entry-level version of the Nvidia TNT2 Family. This card fares extremely well at low resolutions (800x600) and under low color depth (16 bits).



As you can see from the benchmark above, Riva TNT2 M64 video chip's quite good. 48.1 Frames per sec on a Pentium 3-450 at 800x600x16 bits whereas, it takes a big dip at 800x600x32 bits at only 29.7 frames per sec. The PC Chips M754 (the motherboard C&C and Roxfield uses) already has 32 Mb onboard as video buffer memory giving you effectively 96 Mb RAM. 
        Monitors used are all standard 15" (No Name Brand for C&C & Microsys, Philips monitors for Roxfield ), Roxfield gives you the opportunity for choosing other brands like Hyundai or Viewsonic. The 15" screen allows for a maximum of 1024x768 viewable resolution. TVOut might come also as an option on all systems except on the Athlon, ask your supplier about it. As a conclusion, the RIVA TNT2 M64 comes first by a rather wide margin, followed by the i810e and the SIS300 coming as a distant last. Recommended resolutions for playing and working would be 800x600 pix @ 32bit OR 1024x768 pix @ 16bit. As gaming systems, don’t expect these systems to perform well at resolutions like 1024x768 pix under @ 32bit color depth. Quake3 at 10 Frames was never good for the eyes....

Remember the time
Storage wise, all 3 systems come with a rather expansive system. They all sport either a 50x CD-ROM or a 52x CD-ROM (Microsys potentially has a Creative Labs brand since it comes with an optional remote), a Floppy Disk as well as a Quantum 20.4 Gb Hard Disk Fireball CX. An entry-level offer with UDMA66, 512 K Cache and 5400 RPM. Nothing to shout about. Some points to mention about the RAM memory used. Roxfield and Microsys ads mention PC-133 Memory (1st Party). This means that its memory modules come from top Companies like LGS (Lucky Goldstar Samsung) Micron or Hyundai and that they offer exceptional qualities and stability. THERE is no WAY to verify this for the NORMAL buyer. In terms of speed however, the difference is minimal.  Another rather intriguing aspect is that the Microsys system does not provide the full 64 Mb RAM. Microsys uses UMA (unified memory architecture effectively yielding as little as 49 effective Mb Ram for system use.

Music to my ears
All of them offer the now-famous 3D Sound Pro, one of the components of any new PC Chips Motherboard. It offers PC98 compliance (we’re in Y2K), HRTF 3D professional audio, 4 Channel support (you can have 5 speakers pack with it.. Creative Labs 4-points speakers....) and interesting options like SPDIF and optic fiber interface. C&C and Roxfield seems to offer SPDIF, As for the speakers bundled, Again C&C and Roxfield offer 880 and 800w 4 points speakers sets (ENCORE Sub speakers ??), headphones and microphone are also supplied. I won’t be rude with them. Creative Labs speakers would be a real welcome. Unfortunately, no one in Mauritius have Altec Lansing or Midiland or Benwin Speakers... Poor Mauritian Ears.... Small Desktop speakers have the disadvantage of being saturated quite early in terms of power... Try pushing your Alarm clock’s radio at maximum volume and listen...

Le telephone pleure
Communication is not forgotten. A HSP 56K modem is again a token of the PC Chips motherboards. These modems nearly never reach the 56K level. Also they are very well known for their incompatibilities (see Servihoo Magazine #4), I have undergone countless nights trying to work out & ironing out problems with these software modems. These modems tend to suck something like 10% of your CPU and your RAM when communicating. Try to run multiple programs when going online and see for yourself. A rather surprising inclusion is the Network Interface Card being bundled with C&C, but it’s non-existent in Microsys Computers though they can be apparently enabled. Home users won’t find any benefit in it, but who knows?

Other things worth mentioning
C&C and Microsys offers Multimedia Keyboard and mouse, while Roxfield offers simple Keyboard and mouse. These won’t rate first amongst my buying priorities. The casings are pretty standard, Imac style ATX mid tower with ample space (but not ample power) for future upgrades. 3 Year Guarantee (One year on Parts and Labour and 2 Years on Labour Only) are given with all systems. Software package include Yamaha SXYG50, Software synthetiser, Gamut 2000, Mediaring Talk, Super Voice, Corel Wordperfect (Roxfield), PC-Cilin Antivirus and other drivers which comes on the PC-Chips CD-ROM. 
        However NO one offers the Operating system (Windows 95/98). As for I/O Ports, I am somewhat sad about the nonexistence of USB ports on these systems (except the microsys which offers 2 USB ports), this would have been a definite plus.

Conclusion
        All 4 systems represent exceptional value for money in an absolute way. The price factor goes in the direction of the Microsys computers with the lowest price, however the lack of a good video card module, a 330w PMPO speaker set rules it out. The athlon is disavantaged by the poor SIS 300. In the end, the Roxfield Intel P3-800 system wins this round because it offers and delivers power for the penny while adding an goody which is not provided by C&C; one should not underestimate the benefit of a brand-name Monitor. Remember that these prices do not include VAT at 10%. This ends up the first system test on a Mauritian Site.

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