The Ultimate Beast Arrives

First Class All The Way: PIII/500 & Sun River 440BX Motherboard

Hi one and all. It’s been a few weeks now since the last review and evaluation of computer hardware. The time here has been very well spent, and with a big thanks to Intel UK, we received a full blown PIII/500 (Pentium ®III 500 MHz processor) mated with one of their new Sun River 440BX (SR440BX) motherboards. This is by far the most powerful combination of CPU and motherboard ever to be seen here by us. To give it a decent home, we placed it in a Micro ATX tower case, slotted in 128 MB of fast PC 100 ram, 8.4-gig hard drive and viewed it via a 17-inch monitor. We installed Windows 98 and the drivers for the on-motherboard sound and video.

Well, to say this is the fastest CPU is an understatement. It’s a real scorcher—programs just fly and games are a dream to play. We spent many a happy hour trying to find some software to slow the beast down—no luck. No matter what game or office application we gave it to eat, we never managed to give it indigestion. In fact, the PIII/500 just smiled back and asked for more. This is the first time we have not been able to bring a CPU to its knees.

Many reviews of the PIII/500 have stated the increase in performance over the PII/450 is not that significant. Maybe just looking at the numbers it may seem that way, but seeing two PCs side by side running the same program sure is eye opening. I know which CPU I want in my PC and it’s not the PII/450.

Others have also said there is no software making full use of the 70 new SIMD instructions. Not true. Some months ago, we reviewed voice recognition software and found it to be workable, if a bit too slow. However, Pentium 200 MMXs simply do not cut the mustard and the Celeron™only partly brings this type of software up to speed. However, load one of these voice recognition packages on to a PIII/500, and boy, it sure runs extremely well. So well, that I am confidant in stating that if any one is serious about voice recognition, then the PIII/500 must be the processor of choice. With the release of the PIII/500, Intel has made voice recognition a reality for both the office and home user. It’s like you need a warp drive for a star ship to work, well, voice recognition needs a PIII/500 to make it viable.

Pleasure is always followed by pain, so the add campaign says. In this case, owning and using a PIII/500 equipped PC is very much a one-way street—there can be no going back. It’s a bit like having a new car with air conditioning—once you have it, you never will want to be without it. Speed they say is addictive and I know I’m addicted.

The Sun River 440BX motherboard is a real gem—what with its on board NVIDA RIVA TNT graphics controller with 16 MB of memory and sound blaster PCI 64v audio. This motherboard represents excellent value for money. The documentation is second to none, and support via Intel’s web site is first class. The only negative thing I can say about it, from the self builder point of view, they are hard to come by. If ever Intel decided to target their motherboards at the upgrade market, they would be on to a winner.

Those words First Class ring a bell for me. If you are the sort of person that travels first class and pays the price for the comfort and sheer joy of what first class has to offer, then the PIII/500 with the Sun River 440BX motherboard is the new first class of the computing world. If you want the best, need the best, desire the best, need to know that you have the best that the world has to offer in computing power, get a PIII/500 powered PC. Buy it, or build a pc using it. It will then be first class computing for you from then on. All the technical stuff for the PIII/500 and the Sun River 440BX motherboard can be found at the Intel web site. Also, remember the Celeron and PIIs have not gotten any slower, it’s just that Intel has raised the top speed.