IBM Corp is upgrading its PC 300PL and IntelliStation E-Pro and M-Pro workstation ranges this week to use the newly announced 550MHz Pentium III (see Top Stories). The high-end X-Pro has used the 550MHz Xeon processor for some time. IBM will also be upgrading disk drive capacity, and says it’s managed to cut costs on chassis and motherboard prices due to higher volumes.
Launched two years ago, IBM says that its IntelliStation NT workstation range is currently number three in the workstation market after Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Computer Corp. Doug Oathout, worldwide brand manager for IntelliStation, says he believes that when the figures for the first quarter come out IBM will tie for the number two slot. He thinks IBM will overtake Dell in the second quarter, and maybe have the number one slot by the end of the year. IBM’s sales picked up when it rounded out its original M-Pro machines with the high-end X-Pro and entry-level E-Pro systems in the middle of last year. IBM says it isn’t cannibalizing sales of its Unix workstations, which it claims are also doing well. Sales of Intel-based NT workstations are mostly going to the finance, mechanical computer-aided design and digital content creation industries.
The IntelliStation E-Pro uses the Matrox G200 graphics card as its 2D engine, the M-Pro uses IBM’s own FireGL chips (also used in the Unix-based RS-6000 range, though with different boards and drivers), and the X-Pro uses graphics from Intergraph Corp spin-off Intense 3D. The PC 300 uses S3 Inc’s Savage4 chip for graphics. IBM says it plans to release benchmark figures that show the IntelliStation in the lead in all three BAPco SYSMark workstation performance benchmarks, which measure single processor, dual processor and Java-based e-business applications. It says it’s the first vendor to hold the number one slot for all three benchmarks simultaneously.
Prices for the PC 300PL 550 start at $1,897. The IntelliStation E-Pro will cost from $2,200 and the M-Pro from $2,500.
