PolyAlpha 533 SX
Companies that want to upgrade or purchase additional workstations for their engineering departments might want to consider the latest Alpha-based system from Polywell Computers. The flexible PolyAlpha 533 SX workstation offers horsepower, scalability, and a hedge against depreciation and obsolescence. The horsepower comes from the PolyAlpha's 533MHz Digital Semiconductor processor with 1MB of neighboring Level 2 cache. Four PCI slots (two 32-bit and two 64-bit), two ISA slots, and four 168-pin unbuffered DIMMs provide scalability. The PolyAlpha's 64-bit architecture lets you beat the obsolescence curve with a processor and motherboard combination that is likely to fully support future versions of NT.
The PolyAlpha system I tested in the Lab came with 128MB of Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), a 24X EIDE CD-ROM drive, a Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro PCI video card with 8MB of RAM, a Symbios-based Ultra SCSI-3 adapter, and a 4.5GB Ultra Wide SCSI 10,000rpm hard disk. The only thing missing was a NIC. The SX motherboard uses the Digital Semiconductor-designed 21174 logic processor to optimize communication between the system memory and the PCI bus.
To see how well the PolyAlpha 533MHz SX Alpha processor-motherboard combination worked with the Diamond FireGL 1000 to produce 3-D renderings, I ran three of the five viewsets in the Viewperf benchmark suite from the OpenGL Performance Characterization (OPC) group, as I've done for all the Alpha systems in this series that incorporate 3-D graphics cards. These viewsets--CDRS, which measures modeling and rendering capabilities for CAD; Data Explorer (DX), which measures scientific data visualization capabilities; and Lightscape, which tests a system's ability to realistically reproduce light waves--together provide a useful assessment of a system's 3-D rendering capabilities.
I ran the Viewperf viewset tests using a 21" Intergraph monitor with True Color at a resolution of 1280 * 1024. I averaged three runs of each viewset on the PolyAlpha 533 SX, which scored 21.972 on the CDRS Viewset, 5.857 on the DX Viewset, and 0.398 on the Lightscape Viewset. These scores reflect a value in frames per second. (For a better understanding of the Viewperf tests and to see the results for the PolyAlpha 533 SX in context with Viewperf scores for other systems, visit the OPC Web site at http://www.specbench.org.)
I ran the AIM workstation benchmark tests to measure the PolyAlpha's system performance. I ran these tests after installing a 2-D Matrox Millennium II 4MB video card and setting the monitor resolution to 800 * 600 * 16-bit (in general, 2-D graphics cards provide better AIM test results than 3-D graphics cards provide). The two most telling values from these tests are the AIM WNT Peak Performance value and the AIM WNT Sustained Performance value. The AIM WNT Peak Performance value reflects system throughput by measuring the maximum num-
ber of application jobs a system can process in 1 minute. The AIM WNT Sustained Performance value reflects the highest number of application jobs you can run without significantly hindering the system's performance. The PolyAlpha's AIM WNT Peak Performance score was 496 application jobs per minute. Its AIM WNT Sustained Performance score was 191.8 application jobs per minute.
The PolyAlpha's AIM WNT Peak Performance score is the highest for any Alpha system I've tested--and not by a small margin. This score surprised me, considering most Alphas I've tested use the same motherboard and processor that the PolyAlpha uses. The PolyAlpha's SCSI-3 controller and 10,000rpm hard disk help it attain an impressive AIM WNT Peak Performance score. Of course, these hardware wonders push the price up, but you get what you pay for in terms of performance.
Prev. page
1
[2]
3
next page 
