Dell Precision 330 Workstation

The term 'workstation' once implied a non-Windows machine of dizzying potency, although it's now been taken over by impious PC manufacturers and applied to their more ambitious creations - a sign of progress to a certain extent. With processor speeds arcing off into the blue yonder, and graphics cards, hard disks, bus bandwidths and memory speeds all doing their best to keep up, today's workstation is a frightening thing to behold.

Consider Dell's Precision 330 Workstation in 'Midnight Grey', which emphasises the size of its fully grown case. On paper, too, it bulges with power, with a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 flanked by 256Mb of 800MHz RDRAM and a 36Gb 10,000rpm SCSI hard disk hooked up to an Adaptec Ultra160 controller.

Numbers aside, let's look at the system practically. First, the keyboard is nothing special, but it's black, so it looks mean, and the keys aren't too noisy either. The Logitech mouse has three buttons and is exceptionally comfortable to use. No speakers are provided, but there's an integrated sound chip, so basic stereo could be yours for very little extra money. The Dell monitor is based on an aperture-grille tube, and very good it is too. A 17in display that's really at its best in XGA isn't exactly pushing the envelope, but the picture you get is bright, geometrically tidy and crisp. If you want more in this area, there are better CRTs out there, but I was interested to see the back of the graphics card graced by a DVI digital output plus analog D-SUB.

The card is based on nVIDIA's 64Mb DDR Quadro2 Pro - a logical choice for a workstation, with some professional OpenGL acceleration more relevant to professional graphics than games. The 3D benchmark results hit a respectable 5,187 in the 32-bit colour 3DMark2000 test at a resolution of 1,024 x 768. According to Dell, the motherboard used for the Precision will support AGP Pro 50 specification boards, so you'll be in a position to improve on the Quadro2 Pro's performance if you wish.

Dell echoes Intel's line that the Pentium 4 justifies its existence by its potential to carry out particular tasks faster than comparable CPUs like the Pentium III and AMD's Athlon. These tasks centre on video manipulation and compression, audio compression like MP3 and, supposedly, 3D graphics handling. This explains the presence of a three-port IEEE-1394 adaptor in the Precision - something still relatively rare on high-end business PCs.

No-one would argue about the necessity for networking on a machine like this, however, so I was heartened to see a 3Com 10/100BaseTX Fast Ethernet controller integrated on to the motherboard. The Sony CD-RW drive is connected to the motherboard's secondary IDE channel, while the 36Gb Fujitsu MAJ3364MP SCSI hard disk (see Labs, issue 77, p139) takes its cue from an Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 SCSI controller card. Despite impressive statistics, the Fujitsu drive isn't that brilliant for a SCSI device, and it's important to remember that the 160Mbytes/sec optimum transfer rate refers to the bandwidth of the interface, not the speed of the 10,000rpm hard disk. Judging from the detailed breakdown done in the Labs test, Dell may have selected this drive more on the basis of price than performance.

The Precision's workstation credentials get a boost when it comes to getting inside though - the case and fascia come off without removing any screws. The drives in the main stack are secured by spring clips and can be removed and installed quickly without tools. The internal cage for 3.5in hard disks also pulls out through the fascia, and although these drives are screw-mounted, adding or replacing them won't take long. There's also plenty of scope for expansion, with two 5.25in front-opening drive bays free, three PCI slots unused, and support for a maximum of 2Gb of RDRAM via four sockets, once 512Mb RIMMs hit the streets.