Home PC users will soon have the power to produce Hollywood blockbuster-style special effects, judging by the latest announcements from Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Intel.

SGI, responsible for the technology in films such as Jurassic Park, Antz and Prince of Egypt, is making its high-end workstations affordable for consumers. And, for the first time, they will run on Intel chips and the Windows NT operating system.

Intel christened its new generation of processors as Pentium IIIs on Monday. The name may not be exciting nor original but Intel says the new Pentium's performance will enthral, particularly when handling multimedia.

Later on Monday, Silicon Graphics was launching its Visual Workstations, in a move and a machine redolent of Apple's release of the iMac to turn around the company's fortunes.

SGI looking for a winner

SGI has experienced layoffs and management changes in the past year and saw its workstation sales fall more than 20 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 1998.

Until now, its machines have run a version of the Unix operating system using processors based on a MIPs design. Its adoption of Wintel architecture and the dramatic price drop opens up a whole new market for the company.

The Silicon Graphics 320

Like the iMac, the new machines' design is impressive with curved contours, midnight-blue colour and flat-panel display. Inside, SGI supercharges graphics with a "Lithium" chip boosting speeds between the video subsystem and other components to up to 3.2 gigabytes per second, far faster than Intel's Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP).

The base model, the 320, has a Pentium II 350Mhz processor, 128MB of memory and a 6.4GB hard drive. It is listed at $3,395 without the monitor and can be ordered online.

Doubtless a Pentium III version will be available soon after Intel releases its new chip in February. Formerly known as Katmai, the Pentium III follows the MMX processor in putting multimedia instructions onto the chip.