Premmia 4/66d

This name-brand hardware manufacturer unveiled the Premmia line of high-end PCs and workstations earlier this year. The company has traditionally done well in the corporate sales area, always managing to cram that ‘something extra’ into its systems. We had the opportunity of looking at a Premmia 4/66d and have to say yes, AST has done it again with a superbly crafted performance PC.
Externally, the system does not look like it can pull any punches; the unit sits squat and nondescript. It looks like a run-of-the-mill AT box. No low-profile case, flashing, gaudy LEDs. Just a key lock, power, reset switches and discrete LEDs for power and disk access. The keyboard is light but strong with a great feel — like a good cake; not too light, not too heavy. It comes packed with a Microsoft 2-but-ton PS/2-type mouse, DOS 6.0, Windows 3.1 and some system utilities and drivers with some comprehensive documentation. The User Manual is a slim volume that is surprising with the amount of useful information packed within its pages.
The bald specifications of the machine say that the 4/66d is a 66MHz DX2 PC fitted with 8M of RAM standard and an EISA expansion bus. AST also makes much hoo-ha over its LocaJLink graphics adaptor. This is a local bus implementation, placing the graphics subsystem on a direct path to the CPU.
AST has not disappointed in this regard, which is not surprising considering the company has collaborated with video graphics specialists ATI, in placing Mach32 accelerator chips on the motherboard to do the video grunt work. Video RAM is a standard 1M, upgradable to 2M. The result is smooth, flicker-free instantaneous video response in all graphical applications. AST has provided a Windows driver. Other drivers are available through dealerships or downloadable through a BBS.
Internally, the Premmia 4/66d shows its class. The model we looked at is the 173W version, which comes with the software hotloaded onto the 170M Quantum hard drive. The drive is situated towards the rear of the machine on the right-hand side. There is ample space here for additional drives, and the data connector cable to the IDE controller mounted on the motherboard has a spare connector for anyone considering expansion with the built-in disk controller.
The centre section makes way for the external drive devices. There is one 3 5in floppy that comes standard and below this are bays for two additional 5.25in devices. Mounted on the rear wall behind the drives is the big 200W power supply. The
remaining left-hand side of the machine is devoted to the ELSA expansion slots, five in all, and a curious slot for a Pentium upgrade processor board.
Alternatively, additional cache RAM can be mounted in this slot. The proviso with using this special slot is that the corresponding EISA slot cannot be used, or if the cache option is fitted, then only a half-length card.
To get to (he motherboard means referring to the manual. The centre and right sections unscrew or disconnect from their anchoring points either on the case or on the motherboard, to lift out entirely, giving free range over the processor and video RAM. Any upgrade to the SIMM memory sockets is accessible without recourse to removing the drive/power supply ‘cage’ arrangement.
A total of 128M RAM can be configured onboard. The processor is an interesting piece of work, situated next to the SIMMs. The easy upgrade ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) type of socket has been used. I imagine the entire Premmia range shares the same board making for convenient processor upgrade.
As mentioned before, upgrade to a Pentium through AST’s proprietary CUPID architecture is through removing the existing DX2 chip and placing a Pentium processor board in the special slot. However, AST and this reviewer recommend not making upgrades yourself (apart from memory), and instead should contact AST service personnel.
Performance-wise, the 4/66d appeared to fly. We were impressed by the Dell 486DX2/66 earlier this year, but this machine seems to have oomph to spare, which is surprising, considering the benchmarks results were mediocre.
We had no trouble with the ATI Windows drivers, which gave what we visibly perceived to be the best video response I have seen in a Intel DX2-based PC, even at 1024 by 768 resolution. The graphics WinMark clicked over at 15.3 million in 640 by 480 by 256 colours; the Disk WinMark scored at 37,906, while our tests gave a DOSMark rating of 58.48 for the Premmia 4/66d 173W.
AST has used some other nifty features like a Flash BIOS — making BIOS upgrades a simple matter of loading from a disk — a remarkable set of password security options and the easiest CMOS setup I have seen.
This machine is quality and maintains AST’s deserved reputation for exceptional design skill at a not unreasonable price.