Compaq takes a cut
Compaq announces price cuts on ProSignia and ProLiant servers of up to 14 percent in the midst of price cuts from other leading server vendors.
The computer maker also said it is shipping, for the first time, a Proliant server with a 200-MHz Pentium Pro processor with 512KB of integrated cache.
Compaq cited lower component costs as the reason for the reductions, but recent announcements of price-competitive servers from Dell and Hewlett-Packard may have prompted the move.
Three models in the ProSignia 300 line got reductions. The ProSignia 300 5/90 with 90-MHz processor was priced at $3,243 and will now be $2,799, a 14 percent reduction. The ProSignia 300 5/120 with 120-MHz processor was $3,466 and is now $3,066, while the 300 5/150 with 150-MHz processor will be reduced from $4,910 to $4,243.
The ProSignia 500 5/150 with 150-MHz processor will also get a price reduction from $4,910 to $4,243. In the ProLiant line, which is upgradeable to dual processor boards, the ProLiant 1500T 5/133 and 5/166 get smaller cuts. The 5/133 was priced at $7,108 and will now be priced at $6,799, while the 5/166 had its price reduced from $8,431 to $7,899.
Compaq also announced today that the ProLiant 5000 is now available with the 200-MHz Pentium Pro processor containing 512KB of cache memory. Most Pentium Pro processors from Intel ship with 256KB of cache. In general, the more cache, the better the performance.
This new Proliant is targeted at computing-intensive database, data warehousing, and order processing applications, according to the company.
The ProLiant 5000 features a pre-failure warranty for Pentium Pro processors, memory expansion up to 4GB, and support for redundant Netelligent 10/100 TX controllers to eliminate the network adapter as a single point of failure, the company said.
The new Compaq ProLiant 5000 with the 200-MHz Pentium Pro processor containing 512 KB of cache memory is available in volume this month, with prices starting at about $15,600.
In related news, Compaq said today that nearly 80 percent of the PC servers and super servers shipped worldwide with Pentium Pro processors during the second quarter of 1996 were Compaq ProLiant 5000 models. These market share figures are based on a recent study by research firm International Data Corporation.