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Hardware

M Pro 6219-46U

1 Mar, 2003 By: Ron LaFon

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IBM Corp.

4 stars out of 5

IBM’s M Pro 6219-46U offers excellent benchmark scores, but its price is the highest in this review.

The 3.06GHz Pentium 4–based IBM M Pro 6219-46U is housed in a compact and stylish case. This is a sleek design, smaller than previous cases in the IBM M Pro line of workstations. It still offers such niceties as a built-in handle at the front top of the system. The IBM 6219-46U is one of the noisiest Pentium 4 3.06GHz systems I’ve ever heard, a problem that I hope will be remedied in future iterations of this model.

IBM is a well-known company, with many of its systems placed in corporate environments where reliability, excellent support, and certification on a broad array of software applications is essential. IBM systems are remarkably well made and engineered. Many innovations and adaptations have made their way from IBM Labs into virtually all levels of computing. The M Pro 6219-46U shows the attention to detail that you expect from IBM computers.

The M Pro 6219-46U we tested came equipped with a three-button IBM mouse. Because most mice come with wheels these days, not having one took a bit of getting used to. The IBM keyboard was fairly standard, though it had the typical solid feel for which IBM keyboards are noted.

The system houses an NVIDIA AGP 8X Quadro4 980 XGL graphics card and an IBM 124GB EIDE hard drive. System performance was very good, if not the absolute best on every benchmark test. The Broadcom BCM5705 integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet controller addresses networking needs.

In addition to being noisy, our other quibble with the IBM M Pro 6219-46U is that at $4,184, it is the most expensive system reviewed here.