IBM, Polywell, Sony MMX Systems Offer Good Values
July 5th, 2007
Despite the mind-numbing hype of Intel’s MMX chip rollout, PCs built around
the technology are hot property. The newest arrivals, from IBM, Sony, and
Polywell, each have something to offer for different users. All three PCs come with
the Pentium MMX-200 processor, 32MB of RAM, and large hard IDE disks (2.5GB in the IBM, 3.8GB in the Sony, and 2.1GB in the Polywell).
The IBM PC 350 MMX is all business: It lacks a sound card and speakers, even
though native MMX software is expected to use the chip for sound processing.
This isn’t a machine for fancy graphics or games. At a street price of $3955 with a 17-inch monitor, it’s the most expensive of the three systems.
Sony’s Vaio PCV-120 is very much a home machine, although it would be
comfortable in a full-time home office. It’s loaded with a 16X CD-ROM drive,
33.6-kbps DSVD fax-modem, surround sound, MPEG video support, video jacks,
and more software than you can twitch a mouse at. On the downside, the $2928
Sony unit comes with only a 15-inch monitor; a system with a 17-inch monitor
is expected to ship later this year.
The Polywell Poly5200MX8 is the best all-around MMX system of the three, and
the best value to boot. It’s loaded with multimedia extras, including a
Diamond Stealth 3D graphics card with 4MB of RAM for high-end graphics
performance. It also includes the largest case for future peripheral
expansion, and the $2500 price includes a 17-inch Sampo monitor. About the
only thing missing is a modem and sufficient PC World reader feedback on
Polywell’s customer service.
On the performance side, the Polywell consistently edged out both the IBM and
Sony in PC World lab tests, with the Sony always coming out slightly behind most likely because it’s the only system with a 256K secondary cache, as
opposed to the 512K of the Polywell and IBM.
Read the complete story in the April 1997 issue of PC World.
Entry Filed under: Popular
