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Announced in March 1994, Intel Corp.'s 100-MHz DX4 is the fastest 486-class processor yet. Although price wars are narrowing the DX4's lead as a high-performance, low-cost PC, our benchmark tests offer potent evidence that 486 technology still has a place in the age of Pentiums.
This maiden comparison looks at 10 100-MHz DX4-based desktop systems: Ambra Computer Corp.'s Ambra D4100I/VL, AST Research Inc.'s Bravo LC 4/100t, Dell Computer Corp.'s OptiPlex 4100/MX, Digital Equipment Corp.'s DECpcLPx+ 4100, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP Vectra VL2 4/100 PC, IBM's PS ValuePoint 100DX4/Dp, Mega Computer Systems' Impact 486DX4100VL+, Micron Computer Inc.'s 4100PCI Magnum, Polywell Computers Inc.'s Poly DX4-100, and Tangent Computer Inc.'s Tangent VL4100. These systems differ most In performance, and all are relatively well designed and energy efficient.
A TIME TO SET THE PACE. With a 266.69 rate in our SYSmark/Win benchmark tests, the Magnum was much faster than the others in this comparison. Its success may be due in part to high-performance components such as a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) hard disk caching controller card with 1MB of RAM.
Intel says the 100-MHz DX4 is 15 percent slower than a similarly configured 60-MHz Pentium. The average SYSmark/Win score for 60-MHz Pentium systems in our last Pentium comparison was only 213.34. (See "Pentium PCs," March 14, page 62.) However, we tested the Pentiums with 8MB of RAM and a default 2MB of SmartDrive cache, and the DX4s with 16MB of RAM and 4MB of SmartDrive cache. Tested with the same amount of RAM (8MB) and SmartDrive cache (2MB default) as the Pentiums, the Magnum posted a SYSmark/Win rate of 195.34. It's clear that by adding memory and changing SmartDrive settings you can get a performance improvement, but the exact percentage of improvement you get from a Pentium may also depend on the system architectures of the machines you're comparing.
LEARNING TO TELL TIME. Although the DX4 chip approaches Pentium-like performance, at its heart the chip is a juiced-up 486 processor. The DX4 uses a clock-multiplying scheme: It runs internally at a clock speed that triples (not quadruples) the external speed at which it communicates with memory and other peripherals.
The architecture around the chip determines which clock-multiplication rate the DX4 uses. The most common 100-MHz DX4s run internally at...