DECpc APX 150

DEC believes the power of its Alpha chip optimised with Microsoft’s Windows NT will make the company a high-end PC powerhouse over the next few years.
Digital Equipment Corporation first unveiled its DECpc AXP 150 at the end of May, and while the system is shipping, applications to run on the new architecture and its operating system of choice arc slow to embrace the high-powered RISC machine.
Nonetheless, DEC has released a high-quality machine, that when fully stocked, will offer users a tremendous amount of power on their desktop.
The most impressive feature of the AXP ISO, with prices starting at $11,994 for the base system, is the speed of the CPU. While there are no benchmarks’ out yet for cither NT or the Alpha architecture, it is clear that the chip has a lot of horsepower.
According to DEC, the chip operates at a 150MHz and has a SPECmark of ap-proximatly 100+. That compares to a SPECMark of 64.5 for the Pentium and 80 for Hewlett-Packard’s 99-MHz PA-RISC chip. DEC’S SPECmark claims should note that the final ratings are not available until the final release of NT is out the door.
Aside from the numbers game, the DECpc AXP 150’s multitasking capabilities are very clear. When resting the machine, I was able to run a demo of Massteck — a CPU-intensive CAD program — at the same time 1 was logging on to a system administration program, thanks, in part, to the 64-bit power of the Alpha chip and 32M of RAM.
Another program that showed off the CPU power of the AXP was its ability to compress and decompress MPEG video clips. For example, the system was able to run a movie clip from Ghostbusters at nearly real-time — 30 frames per second. The quality of the video was surprisingly clean and runs extremely smoothly.
Aside from the raw CPU power, the DECpc AXP 150 is also packed full of different features. For example, the system comes with 512K of onlxjard cache storing that increases tlx? CPU speed by increasing the amount of information sent to the SRAM. Five internal storage bays allow users to configure the system with such storage systems as CD-ROMs, removable media, tape back-ups, and 3 5in desk drives. The system can also hold up to 4.2G on internal hard disks.
Another impressive feature of the AXP 150 is its I/O capabilities. There are six ES1A slots — which run at 33MHz as well as additional ESIA, ISA, PCI, of SCSI controllers, lOBaseT and thin coaxial networking connections, and built-in fax/ modems. The computer also comes standard with two serial pons and one parallel port.
The AXP system comes standard with a Compaq Q-Vision SVGA video adaptor with 1024 by 768 resolution running at 72MHz. Users also have a choice of a 14, 17, or 19in colour monitor.
Back at the end of May, when the system was released, DEC claimed more than 300 applications were going to be ported to the new Alpha-based system. In fact, DEC claimed that “thousands of WIN 16 and DOS applications would run on tire Alpha/NT architecture without modification.” However, when I tried to load AutoDesk 3D Concepts the system continually crashed. I was then told by DEC technical support that the reason was that the program had not been recompiled to run on either platform.
That may be one of the key reasons that close to three quarters of the 99 IS professionals surveyed by research firm, Intelliquest in the US, said they are not planning on moving to the Alpha architecture for at least six months.
In all, I would recommend the system to application developers and power users because of the AXP 150’s superb CPU power. However, by moving to the AXP 150, users are making a dear commitment to NT. I think it would lie much wiser to wait for the next six months to let the system fill out its planned line of NT-based applications before even thinking of moving to the Alpha platform.

Processor:DECchip 21064, 150 MHz

Coprocessor:integrated into CPU

L1-Cache:8 Kbytes Code, 8 Kbytes Data

L2-Cache:512 Kbytes

Integer Performance:roughly like a Pentium 90

Memory:80 Mbytes (options range from 16M to 128M)

Bus:6 EISA slots

Interfaces (onboard):