P4 1.7 GHz Workstation

The Precision 340 is a series of entry-level workstations from Dell, and the model we received for evaluation had an impressive configuration: a P4 1.7 GHz with 1 GB RDRAM to handle memory-hungry business applications. It had a 34 GB Fujitsu SCSI hard drive, which really helps improve performance over regular IDE hard drives. Because the workstation is not meant for heavy graphics work, the graphics sub-system was an Nvidia Quadro2 EX card with 32 MB of on-card memory. The display is a Dell 1503FP 15” flat panel LCD screen with an auto-adjust feature to automatically adjust the picture size and aspect. The machine also comes with a 48x Lite-On CD drive and a standard 1.44 MB floppy drive. 

The motherboard has four USB ports (two in the front and two at the back) and on-board 10/100 Ethernet port. Sound is also on-board SoundMAX audio. Two serial, one parallel port and a SCSI port (from the SCSI card inside) complete the connectors at the back. 

Another notable thing about Dell machines is their completely tool-less maintenance. This means that you don’t need any tools to open the casing or to remove and replace any of the cards inside or even for the hard disk and the CD drive! This significantly speeds up any hardware troubleshooting to be done. 

We almost forgot to mention another nice little feature–a built-in speaker. The cabinet has a speaker inside which is wired to the sound card. Though it is not a standard PC speaker, it plays the sound card’s output like music and game sounds. Of course, the output volume and quality, as expected, is just acceptable. Also, if you plug in an external speaker jack into the

sound-card connector, this speaker gets disconnected.

We tested the system on a standard set of benchmarks for business software and allied tasks. In Business Winstone 2001, it scored an impressive 52.6 Winstone units. This is a very good score and will ensure that the machine performs well in business applications. The Content Creation Winstone 2001 result was a whooping 69.9 units, the highest we have seen till now! The graphics sub-system could have been better though. It gave us a score of 2682 3DMarks in the 3DMark 2001 benchmark.

The Bottom Line. Pricing for Precision workstations starts at Rs 132,835. It has a great set of features and configuration,

which of course results in good performance. Overall, a decent entry-level workstation.

Ashish Sharma at PCQ Labs