Looks like normal cheap PC's. Nothing special. Think I have to leave the sinking boat. No 4 CPU Machine anymore. 9GB Harddrives: hahaha...Floppy Drive: hahahahaha...600 MHz CPU's ok, but could be better. 75Hz System Graphics: hahahahah...I think I sell my two Sgi's and go for Intergraph....
Its not that bad, I think the new machines hit a good price point. SGI stated a long time ago that their IRIX line was being continued til 2006 [Origin, Octane, etc] so if you were expecting new SGI Irix boxes the most you can expect is an upgrade. [R12000 400mhz, etc]
The VPRO [which seems to me is a similar card to the geforce 2 from what they posted in specs] will be availible for IRIX soon according to the press release.
Of course SGI is going to go the standard pc route. Thats what everyone else wants. VPC flopped because you can't have a pc with intergrated video. That defeats the purpose of a windows box because you can't upgrade the video. Heck even Intergraph is basically a standard pc with a 3dlabs card [now that 3dlabs brought out intense3d].
I think the new SGI's price performance is good compared to the IBM Intellistation / Dell / HP Line of workstations. 4CPU xeons just didn't sell as well for workstations just as SGI hoped. And their is faster cpus availble. And you can have larger then 9GB hard drives to. Since the platform supports PC133 and RDRAM... theres no reason why you can't have DUAL 1Ghz cpus. That doesn't sound like a crappy system to me by a long shot. However the real problem is Intel meeting demand for 1ghz parts which they can't now.. so thats all smoke and mirrors for now =). Don't blame sgi.
The machines listed are the minimum configuration.
Btw, my cheap celeron pc at work blows away the octane I use at work speed wise. Of course IRIX is a better OS but the main big point of this release:
Full blown Opengl Support for LINUX [!]. This is a good alternative for companys to switch their irix machines to linux without having to worry about Windows NT. Seeing Houdini and Maya [august] 3 will be out for linux .. that software and this box is a good combination and I know it will sell real well.
hmm, looks pretty darned sweet to me,
depending on the price, and how things
turn out later on, i might purchase one!
"9GB Harddrives" um.. you can have much
larger than that, you just have to request it.
"Floppy Drive" whats so funny about that?
you still need a floppy drive to install many
types of drivers,
and unless your stupid, you'll need it for your NT repair disk.
Most of all, I think that the best part will
be the insane speed of the nvidia graphics, with
SGI drivers, considering the fact that sgi makes
maya(sort of) the maya drivers will probably be dead on!!
-Tad
LHPtomi@hotmail.com
http://tadpage.homestead.comhttp://tadpage.homestead.com
Just noticed that the graphics specs of the new SGI VPro graphics match those of the original GeForce Quadro, not the GeForce2 GTS. SGI advertises 540 Mpix/sec fillrate, and that's the same as the Quadro. Also I noticed the 17 million triangles per second, which is also Quadro's figure. The respective numbers for the GeForce2 GTS are 800 Mpix/sec and 25 mill tris/sec.
The SGI boxes will still be faster than the normal Quadros since they're equipped with DDR memory. I don't think Elsa has a DDR Quadro out yet.
All we have to see next is can the GeForce2 be run with SGI's drivers, and how easy is it to toss out the VPro and change it to a newer card.
Just my two cents.
~ Frand
just want to say something about floppys(i know this is off topic)
It
I just hope that these systems are not build around the i820 chipset with the performance downgrading MTH (Memory Translator Hub). Any chipset info on the 230/330/550 would be appreciated.
erixon,
most people just use floppys
for what i said, driver install, and little things.
i'm guessing that sony thing costs more than 50bucks?
a floppy drive can be purchased for around 15bucks,
and it probably costs like 2bucks to put it in a system.
-Tad
LHPtomi@hotmail.com
http://tadpage.homestead.comhttp://tadpage.homestead.com
yes tad,you are absolutly right,But floppys are going to stay for a while,why not make 120mb floppys a standard!
We'll just have to wait to see if they are worth the price with the new Highendtest. SGI can't be stupid , so they must know that they will perform well. As far as floppys go , they'll be here forever. As far as making a new standard , go right ahead . Knowing that 80% of computer owners don't ever own a zip drive I'm sure that that will be easy to do. You never know when you may need it and they don't take up any space so why not have one? I can't even tell you how many times someones given me a logo or a texture on a floopy and ask me to do something with it.
"..you know, its hard to get people to pay you to make dancing robots.."
--Mr.K
I have not used any floppys since 2 years! I really can not understand what this dinotechpart should be good for. 3-10 megs you can easily send by the net the rest you can do with opticals, zip's or cd's. There is no new software today that will be distributet by floppys. All other software (drivers, updates...is distributet by the web. At our Art School in Zuerich we have about 100 G3/G4's running all without floppys - since one year not one person asked for it. For me it sounds very odd to have this prehistoric part in a future highend machine.
What happens when you need to build a system from scratch and yoiu are not attached to the net? No floppy is fine if you are connected to the net but if you are not you may find problems at some point. unless you have all uptodate parts and your using win2k in that case it may have all the drivers you need but thats not always the case. I have been able to get around that though with bootable cd's that I make (even for start up disk) works great with my all scsi system. .. but thats another story. Most people would be lost without floppies and you wouldnt notice until it really mattered one day and your stuck!
"I put my faith in the power of my own mind."
ICQ#58898276
Huh! Since one year I have a 320. I didn't know that Nt can't be bootet from CD. As a formerly Mac user I'am used to boot from Cd's. But that's a little off topic now.
My SCSI only Tyan board shipped with NT drivers on floppy, not on CD. Which is fine because I needed to do the whole "Hit F6 to install..." routine. Floppies are important =)
-raving pixel guy-
I just got the price for the entry level 230 (733Mhz, 256meg ram, 9gig disk): over 8000 SwissFranks. My 320 Dual 500 Mhz with half Gig Ram was only 1000 Sfr. more, and am shure she will be beating this 700 Mhz thing.(not in graphics but in rendering). So you'll get less for the same price. 9 gig System Disk? From a highend System you can expect at least 20 gigs. today Every simple PC or G4 apple comes with at least 20 gig disk. No guys, thats really not what I expected from sgi. I am really wondering how Maya will perform on the new dual and quad G4's.(shouldn't they be released today?) Of Course you will say about the lacking graphics performance, but that its always a question what is first: the chicken or the egg, I am very pleased to see that AW did the big egg! An new chicken can grow up now. So Its a question of time until first Highend 3d Cards comes to OSX. And I am pleased to see a chance switching my two Maya (Unix and NT) Stations to OSX. And by the way I did some tests with cinema4d on the 320 and G4: the built in Ati Rage128 is not so bad as some people say. In shaded mode the G4 was about 15% slower than the cobalt graphics.(used a very large and detailed 3d scene).
So what?
Yeah actually you can install NT from cd rom fine (thats how I install it) but thats just the operating system. lan card has its drivers on a floppy, my adaptec 29160 card that powers my system has its drivers on a floppy too. It is possible to go competely floppyless however until manufacturers put all drivers on cd's it won't happen.
"I put my faith in the power of my own mind."
ICQ#58898276
9GB scsi disk.. which is comparable to price to a 20GB EIDE disk, which is what I believe a G4 has.
Most simple G4's and Pc's use EIDE. If you really want a EIDE 20GB drive go buy one for 150$ =).
Don't hold your breath for OSX Maya... OSX got delayed again... and even so I very much doubt we'll see maya released on the launch of OSX.. more likely a few months afterwards.
ATI rage 128 Is pure ass.. it doesn't even properly support opengl. Unless you want to run quake 3 
.
What's the point with EIDE/ATA 66 Drives? They deliver sustained 24meg/sec.(at least the ones in the G4) Is that much less than the UW2 SCSI Disks? I don't think they deliver much more (Maybe the new 12000rpm disks deliver up to 30megs)
Thats anyway much more than the 9gig disks Sgi uses (With a little bit of luck you get 14megs out of it)
I always was interested in Sgi (I myself have 2 Machines: O2 & 320 dual both with Maya and a G4) but I in different points I am really disappointed. Rendering Power on R10 Systems is much slower than on PIII or G4 Systems (of course the 32 cpu Origin System are unbeatable - but that's another point), Disk Performance is slow on both Sgi Systems. (Maybe i do something wrong, but I think all is set up properly)
Ati is pure ass -ok! but she's only 10% slower in OpenGl shaded rendering than the 320 - does this tell me that cobalt is also pure ass?
I use an all scsi system and can never go back to eide stuff no way. scsi is at 160megs a second now and eide is at ata 66 and the unavailable serial ata which won't be around for a long while still is ata100 and scsi vs ide is not even a fair battle with scsi's much higher transfer rate consistancy vs eides cpu sucking much lower bursts don't make it a true competitor. The only comparable (consistancy wise) eide solution is to get 4 40 gig eide hardisks (check your cost on the price of competing with scsi rates)and put them on a fastrack or adaptec eidi raid card in raid 0. This will give you something closer to the speeds and consistant transfer rates of a single small u2w scsi 7200rpm hard disk. scsi has many more benifits than I feel like going into right now. I use an all scsi system with multiple 10,000 rpm ultra160 hardisks and it is just awsome. my os dirve is a 9 gig drive but I also have 4 other drives and anyone with knowledge of setting up an efficient scsi systm knows that its distrbution of os,application, and data drives that makes scsi systems the superior beasts they are anyway..... blablabla sorry for going on about that.... bottom line is ide performance doesnt compare to scsi . You can put 15 72 gig drives on one scsi controler and if you have 5 pci slots you can put 75of these 72 gig drives in your system that equals 5,400 gigs of 10,000 or 15,000rpm ultra 160 hard disk space. compared to the 4 ide channels on a motherboard which leaves you room for 4 eide devices 1cdrom,3 eide hard disks? hahaha I didnt even go into a scsi raid system and how far you can go with that.
"I put my faith in the power of my own mind."
ICQ#58898276
The special thing is the video card which is the Nvidia Quadro plus SGI's own drivers... the combination should be just what any midrange workstation user needs- very good interactive performance at a reasonable price + future expandability using standard PC parts.
You're right it's not spectacular but I've been looking for this for a while now as have many others I suspect.
The Dell 4/620s with the quadro have DDR memory, so says my sales guy.