Akia: Fastest Mac in the East

Akia will introduce one of the fastest desktop Macintoshes going this month as it fleshes out its offerings in Japan.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.

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Brooke Crothers

May 1, 1997 12:30 p.m. PT

2 min read

Akia, a Japan-based manufacturer of Mac clones, will introduce in May one of the fastest desktop Macintoshes going as it fleshes out its offerings in Japan, one of the largest Mac markets in the world.

Akia plans to release a dual-processor Mac-compatible computer with two 233-MHz PowerPC 604e chips, according to the company. The 604e is the fastest PowerPC processor and is typically used in workstation-class systems and server computers.

Dual-processor Mac OS machines
	Processors	RAM	Cache	Price
Apple 9600/ 200MP	200-MHz 604e	32MB	512K L2	$4,700
PowerTower Pro 225MP	225-MHz 604e	32MB	1MB L2	$4,695
SuperMac S900/233	233-MHz 604e	32MB	512K L2	$4,199
DayStar Genesis LT	200-MHz 604e	16MB	512K L2	$4,999
Akia MBPower 604e/233DP	233-MHz 604e	144MB	512K L2	over $5,000

The MBPower 604e/233DP will include a number of pricey, high-end features such as powerful 3D graphics capabilities and a prodigious amount of memory that will make it one of the most fully-loaded Mac desktops currently available.

The new Akia offering will compete with systems from companies such as Umax, which also has a 233-MHz PowerPC 604e processor. The Umax system is upgradable to a dual-processor configuration.

Like the Umax computer, the Akia MBPower 233DP is intended for use by graphics professionals such as Web page designers that need Unix workstation-class performance.

The 233DP will include a massive 144MB of memory, a 4GB hard disk drive, a 12X CD-ROM drive, and an Imagine128 Series 2 video card equipped with 8MB of video memory.

It will ship with Mac OS 7.6. Retail price will be 648,000 yen--a little over US$5,000.

The computer also has 6 PCI slots, built-in 10BaseT Ethernet, and memory that can be expanded to 1,040MB. A 512K L2 cache memory is also included.