Gateway 2000 G6-233

Judging by the tone of its pre-Christmas TV ad campaign and some judiciously timed price cuts, it looks as though Intel wants to get Pentium II established in the home market as quickly and smoothly as possible. Pentium II is already linked perceptually with faster graphics via AGP, so a push into the domestic sector with machines cunningly camouflaged by Christmas stockings makes a lot of sense.

It's going to be a while before mainstream business really starts to interest itself in 3D graphics on an everyday basis, but any system used for gaming is probably already pushing the envelope, and any extra 3D performance will be immediately appreciated.

Intel's views would appear to be shared by a number of system manufacturers which have obligingly wheeled out Pentium II machines with a distinctly populist spin in the run-up to Christmas. The Gateway G6-233 combines Pentium II and AGP with multimedia in a package that's most certainly going to appeal to the home as well as to the business user. Just check the price for a start.

The G6-233 is presented in Gateway's new-style midi-tower case, which sports distinctive convex sides and, to my eye, looks rather nice. The alternative view is that it looks as though something large and heavy has partially squashed it. Whatever the outcome of the aesthetic debate, the cooling fan is subdued, which is what really counts.

The keyboard was disappointing, being plastic throughout and a bit flimsy. The mouse is a Microsoft Intellimouse with that extra wheel, which would be great for easy scrolling if only more apps supported it.

You get a 17in Gateway CrystalScan FST monitor with a 15.8in image diagonal and digital controls operated by a single rotary control. This works very well, and there was no problem setting up the geometry. The picture is quite sharply focused overall, and the tube supports an 85Hz vertical refresh at 1,024 x 768 resolution, although the review machine arrived flickering at 60Hz, so it was left to us to set it up properly.

According to Gateway, the CD-ROM drive is likely to change from the current 12/24-speed device supplied with the review machine to a drive which can peak at 32-speed. The sound subsystem is based around an Ensoniq wavetable card which drives a pair of active Altec Lansing ACS41 speakers. These boast power and clarity, and can also be expanded by the addition of an optional subwoofer.

There are three cards in the system, starting with the 4Mb STB Velocity 128 in the AGP slot at the top, followed by the Ensoniq sound card in the adjacent PCI slot, with the US Robotics 33.6K modem down in the bottom ISA slot. This leaves one ISA and three PCI slots free, although there's a shared backplate cutout, so using the ISA slot will reduce the PCI total to two.

You can add one 3.5in and two 5.25in drives using the front-opening bays in the main stack, and there are a further two internal 3.5in parking spaces next to the 4Gb Quantum Fireball hard disk. Finally, if you want to increase the 32Mb of base memory, there are two unused DIMM sockets.

All the technology you might expect to see in a Christmas present is packed into the Gateway. There's wavetable audio, an X2 upgradable 33.6K data/fax/voice modem of reputable origins, AGP for fast graphics bandwidth and throughput, fast SDRAM main memory and finally, a 33Mbytes/sec UltraDMA hard disk interface.

Performance is predictable for a Pentium II/233 with this sort of specification: fast enough for most tasks, but not quite hot enough for the real speed demons. As a complete package, it's unlikely to disappoint the Christmas buyer, but the faster Dell Dimension XPS D266 (reviewed p160) offers just that little bit more.

Author: Dominic Bucknall