Scream'n Demon Personal Alpha-SX Special
The engineers at Microway have done what seemed impossible not long ago: 
They've brought an Alpha-based workstation to market at a price you'd expect to pay for a typical Intel-based consumer machine. The Scream'n Demon workstation is built around the Digital Semiconductor- designed 533MHz 21164-PC processor and Alpha PC 164SX motherboard and brings 64-bit RISC processing power to the NT platform for less than $2000.
Software compatibility is the biggest hurdle facing NT Alpha-based workstations. Because it's based on 64-bit architecture, an Alpha system can run only software designed for the NT Alpha processor or Intel-native software that the freely distributed interpretive program FX!32 recompiles. However, not all Intel-native NT software successfully ports to the NT Alpha platform with FX!32. Therefore, many NT Alpha vendors aim their systems toward high-end 3-D graphics rendering, to take advantage of the high-speed Alpha processor. This strategy is not the case with the Microway system, however: Microway designed the Scream'n Demon as a general workstation. The system's standard graphics card, the Matrox Millenium II, is not an OpenGL 3-D card. The Scream'n Demon workstation I tested scored 302.9 application jobs per minute in WNT Peak Performance and 157.3 application jobs per minute in WNT Sustained Performance on the AIM benchmark tests.
The Scream'n Demon's features include 1MB of off-chip Level 2 cache; four PCI slots (two 32-bit and two 64-bit); two ISA slots; and room for four 128-bit, 168-pin unbuffered Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) Dual Inline Memory Modules (DIMMs). The Lab's test system came with 64MB of SDRAM, a 24X IDE CD-ROM drive, a black midtower case, a matching black keyboard, a 4GB Seagate IDE hard disk, 3.5" disk drive, and a three-button Logitech mouse. The Matrox Millennium II video card is a great choice for this configuration.
One thing I don't like about this system is its lack of SCSI-device support. The majority of the Alpha systems I have tested have SCSI hard disks, which might account for the Scream'n Demon's relatively lackluster AIM benchmark values. This system doesn't include a network interface card, which should be part of the system configuration for a machine with the Scream'n Demon's feature set. But finding serious fault with this workstation is difficult: After all, the Scream'n Demon's price tag is roughly half that of most other Alpha systems.
The Scream'n Demon is not a 3-D graphics workstation, but its 533MHz processor is probably overkill for typical office tasks requiring word processing, spreadsheets, and email. However, graphic artists, publishers, designers, and developers who are not doing intensive 3-D graphics work will find that the Scream'n Demon more than meets their needs.
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