How fast are SGIs really

[wizzackr]

look, this may sound a bit weired, but i bumped into this page (http://www.reputable.com/sgilist.html) and finally saw the prices for SGI systems for the first time. and man, these are cheap... well, not really cheap, but definitely not more than any dual xeon or whatever else.

so i was wondering, does any of you guys know how much faster these are in apps like Maya or softImage? i was looking for some benchmarks, but couldn't find any that helped. isn't pixar and all these people working on SGI systems? so these things have to be faster, right? highly specialized, for sure, but the bang for buck ratio seems amazing on the first sight (IF you are into rendering).

thanks for the input,
j

[jeffd]

I am interested to know how many people/studios are still on SGIs? The marketshare used to be dominant, but NT-based stuff seems to have really taken over. I rarely even see ads for SGI workstations anymore. They used to be everywhere.

--JeffD

[1000101-]

though clock for clock an SGI might be faster than a p4 or athlon; the fact that theres such a huge glaring lead in clock speed puts the crown squarely on x86 as far as speed is concerned. Rendering performance is well under that of an equivellent priced x86 box.
keep in mind reputable deals in refurbed systems that are several years old. Newer SGI's cost many thousands more and still aren't faster systems..
but then its all relative to the work your doing.
to give you an idea
pixar chucked all its sun machines in favour of intel based systems in the renderfarm (likely the workstations all suffered a similiar fate)
and ILM swapped to linux on intel midway through episode2's production.

[tribalquest1]

Unless you have very specific needs, don't bother with sgi hardware. The main situations that I can think of where getting an sgi workstation today is worth it is if you need more than 4GB of RAM (The sgi Octane machines can use up to 8). Other than that I know they used to get (slightly) better framerates when displaying large, textured, models in high resolutions (if you had a top of the line Octane 2), but with the latest cards from NVidia and 3Dlabs this advantage might be gone. I will stick my next out and claim the Maya on Irix is more stable than Maya on Windows, but I'm sure people will debate this.

When it comes to rendering the latest chips from AMD or Intel will comfortably beat anything sgi has.

So really the only reason to get an sgi is if you like workling in Irix. So unless you need 8 gigs of RAM get an Intel workstation and run Windows or Linux, as these will be both cheaper and faster.

[1000101-]

Honestly the stability of maya is about the same accross all platforms.

IRIX is typically more stable and featureful than linux, win2k, and OS X though.
its also more mature.

[tribalquest1]

Well perhaps Maya itself is just as stable all both platforms, but Windows does crash while running Maya more than Irix, which at the end of the day ammounts to Maya being more stable on Irix. In my experience.

[1000101-]

What sorta work you do with it?
dynamics intensive stuff?
All I do is modelling/animation and occassionally throw render jobs at it and I'm just curious to see the differences between our workloads.

I've never brought an x86 system down with win2k.. XP yeah hehehe

[diese1]

I can be wrong, but until I imagine the SGI graphics cards have the great advantage to acelerate Ray-Tracing calculations and no "normal" professional graphics card like the Quadro and the Wildcat can't do this complex kind of calculation, they are really things from other world, the others are simple polygon graphics cards

And RenderMan is a Ray-Tracer, so logical they used SGi equipments

In the processor area, the MIPS are outdated if I am not wrong, but like they come on the SGI graphics stations
The SGI create the Itanium2 memory controller, perhaps they are think in Itaniun2 to be their processor (only a guess my)

[undiscokid]

I run Maya and Max on my SGI 320, with only a single p3 500, vs my dual 800 p3 grey box and an NVIDIA 128 ti 4600 card, the SGI is about 200% faster with real time rendering of the workspace.

I'd say they're quick compared to the average computer, and you can pick up a 320 for less than $1000 on Ebay.

Cheers,

Scott

[ncheater]

Sorry to say, but they were from another world. Now they'r just expensive and slow.
Nowdays if you look at the spec and numbers on the V8 ,V10... cards you will find that there's always a quadro card with very similar numbers.
Simply because they are pretty much the same thing.

[1000101-]

strange
I get quite the opposite performance here.

320's were dog ass slow; still are today.
my ti4600 machines are faster than the quadro1 based machines we have; which those are faster than the 320's

not only that but I have the option of using more modern hardware than a p3 500.

[roctane]

sgi used to be the the (!!!) company for highend workstations in the past.

Their unix IRIX is an excellent OS, but it lacks support from the major software companies.

I work in the automotive design and traditionally we worked on sgi's (Indigo2, Octane + Octane2).
The software is Alias Studio|Tools and Icem Surf and visualisation is made on Opticore or Icem realtime renderer.

I am still a big fan of IRIX (it is simple the best Unix on the planet...), but the hardware is outperformed by modern P3 and P4 workstations with good graphics cards.

Even the newest sgi workstation fuel with the latest graphic V12 and the R16k is outperformed in any way by modern PeeCee-workstations. It is more than sad...

The only reason why large companies stay with sgi is their structure of maintaining the systems. Admins hate the idea of administrating 50 pc-based workstations!

Fact is, I am still owning an Octane Dual R12k 300 Mhz and MXE graphics, 2gb ram ++++...

I have at home as a statue and a symbol for my company founding. I do my work at home on an Dual P3 Intergraph zx10 with wildcat 5110 and it is uncomparable faster than the sgi.

At work I am using a Dual Xeon P4 with Quadro4 graphics and this is a really fast machine. Currently there is no software which is performing better on the desktop under Irix. Graphic speed is a laugh. VPro sgi means nothing more than quadro2!

When you in the need of computing fem analysis and or crash simulations on multiprocessor systems than you go for sgi server and their great OS Irix. The server with 32-512 possible cpu's will do the job thanks to their scaling.

As a workstation forget sgi ....

I am still hoping that sgi will find their return and blow away this pc-stuff!

[gmask]

I am still hoping that sgi will find their return and blow away this pc-stuff!

To be honest that seems unlikely.. The whole R&D of computing hardware is a difficult battle. Linux only has a shot at it because the use wintel hardware. In order for SGI to compete they would have to dramatically reduce the cost of their RISC architecture and some how make Irix apealing for developers and the chances of that seem nill. I'm thinking they ar elucky to still be on top with the hugely scalable architecture.. that has allways been their real strength but as the low end raises the bar they too will have to stay ahead of the pack as surely at some point desktop system will be capable of pushing around the same amount of data as today's super computers.

[roctane]

You are more than right. The development of PC's is extremly fast and in most of the areas in the workstation environment they have already taken the lead.

And it is just a question of time when highend PC's have the possibility to take over tasks for Onyx-Systems.

[jtk77]

I've said for a few years now, where SGI faultered was not hitting the consumer market with its knowlege.
All things start pro, then in order to continue and become the dynasty that is apple and mircosoft, its the consumer money..
couldn;t have sgi made a usable IRIX sysem that was affordable for home use in the early 90s? Why was mangament so narrow and didn't expand to business?
Then where would we be? maybe they would have coutless billions and MS would be bankrupt?

[nuabudikae]

I've said for a few years now, where SGI faultered was not hitting the consumer market with its knowlege.
All things start pro, then in order to continue and become the dynasty that is apple and mircosoft, its the consumer money..
couldn;t have sgi made a usable IRIX sysem that was affordable for home use in the early 90s? Why was mangament so narrow and didn't expand to business?
Then where would we be? maybe they would have coutless billions and MS would be bankrupt? <<

I think the closest SGI EVER came to being mainstream was when they ALMOST bought Apple around 1997 when SGI had plenty of cash to burn and Apple was floundering a bit. Even though Apple had $2billion CASH in its coffers, the pundits ignored it, the news headlines were much more exciting to talk about its unavoidable demise.

Today few predict the immenent demise of Apple (though many still predict its long term undoing, actually it has been that way for Apple's ENTIRE history) and the shoe is on the other foot in some regards concerning SGI. SGI is now the company on the ropes and they have very little money in the bank and their stock price is prime for take over. The question becomes WHY would Apple want to buy them on the cheap for $200-500 Million?? Is their NUMA architecture THAT great? Obviously Apple doesn't care about the MIPS chip. Perhaps for the name and the clout of SGI of yester year? Well what of the high level contracts that SGI has with the military? Surely that is something Apple would love to tout, OR would they? SGI must have some great IP that it owns lock, stock and barrel, but how much can Apple license it on the uber-cheap instead of forking over between one quarter and half a billion?

Apple is a very Politically Correct company. Steve Jobs is a bleeding heart liberal to the hilt. [censored], look at the loser they just brought to the board of directors at Apple, why it is none other than Al Bore. If that doesn't spell demise then i don't know what does. Anyway, just my humble rumblings from my perspective. As a teenager i fantasied about owning my own SGI someday. And you know what, maybe i still will, only it will be a used 02 from Ebay.

Cheers!

john

[jtk77]

jsut a side note, and youmake great points..but to inforce that the consumer makes or breaks your compnay and the Pro user brings he presige and the R and D..
what Saved apple?
Well...the IMAC.August 1998. ...
How was apple before they focused on a cheap consumer box?
It gave them such a boost that they saved themselves and got cash to further the G4 into production.
SGI should have run on its reputation and put out some cheap buiness boxes running their OS and changed the face of Computing before windows and intel got their [censored] in order.
But hey, who would have known all this would explode.

[nuabudikae]

SGI never had the software to appeal to joe consumer. Even today the most interest consumers have in 3d is for GAMING. SGI software developers are more of the serious lot that focus on high end visualization versus Quake 3.

SGI's answer to the then coming on strong MS/Intel NT juggernaut was the 02. And it did pretty well for what it was, it just wasn't cheap enough.

SGI could never begin to compete with the massive economies of scale that Compaq, HP, Dell, IBM and a litnany of others can and do foist upon the computing world. Its just part of the beast i suppose.

[jtk77]

yeap, they never had any consumer level software.
My point is ..they SHOULD have.

[kiwi]

you really think so?

Consumers never had any reason or interest to work on SGI -let alone UNIX. -too expensive, too much command line, too expensive, no useful perhipherals, uh...too expensive.

Marketing to consumers would have been throwing away more money. This would not have worked, me thinks.

KIWI