Anybody seen benchmarks of a 320 with PIII 600 or faster CPUs? Does Cobalt scale with CPU speed? Does the Rev B motherboard really work with PIII 800s?
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Critofur
I don’t have actual benchmarks but I do have a comparison. I had dual PII 450Mhz in my 320 and bought dual PIII 600Mhz for it. Before I changed out the CPUs, I did a test render on a complex image using Maya’s batch renderer set with the dual-CPU option. The total time for rendering using the PII 450 CPUs was 6 minutes and 48 seconds. Then I swapped out the 450s for the 600s, started up and reran the render. The total render time using the PIII 600s was 5 minutes and 17 seconds. With the new 600s I didn’t notice any other difference in system performance. It took the same amount of time to boot, the programs all started about the same as before, and complex images still moved as choppy as before while working in Maya. I think you’ll only notice the difference in those operations that make heavy use of the CPU like rendering, compiling, AV encoding/decoding, or filters like in Photoshop. If you do decide to update your CPUs, remember to also update your PROM if it hasn’t been updated before.
And about 800Mhz on a 320…when I called up SGI technical support to get the jumper settings for 600Mhz, they told me to only use the Katmai PIII and not the Coppermine PIII. Then they got generous with their information: they told me that if I could find any, I could also use Katmai PIII processors in the range of 650, 700, 750, and 800Mhz. Then they said that even though I could use these processors in the 320, SGI will not provide me with technical support if I did (they only support up to 600Mhz). I didn’t know that there were any Katmai CPUs faster than 600Mhz, I just accepted their information and went looking on the Internet for 650Mhz thru 800Mhz Katmai CPUs, but to no avail (all are Coppermine). I don’t know what will happen if you stick a Coppermine PIII in a 320, but I’m not going to be the first to try it on my system. Anyway, if anybody has any information on Katmai CPUs faster than 600Mhz, I would definitly appreciate it. For anybody lucky enough to find such CPUs, here are the jumper settings:
650Mhz down,down,up,down (same as 600Mhz)
700Mhz down,up,up,down
750Mhz down,up,up,up
800Mhz down,up,down,up
LORT
Thanks - I got it 2nd hand without any CPUs so I put a pair of 600s in it.
When you say “moves choppy in Maya” what are you comparing it to? Would my home built P3/733 w/GeForce 2 64 be faster if I put enough memory into it? I was thinking of doing the GeForce → Quadro mod but after reading further it doesn’t seem to be worth it except for CAD or wireframe rendering…
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Critofur
The “choppy in Maya” just means that when I open a very large scene with lots of textures and lights using shaded mode in the perspective view, the refresh I got when I tumbled the scene using the 450Mhz CPUs is the same as with the 600Mhz CPUs. In other words I didn’t notice any difference in the operation of Maya or any of my other 2D/3D apps when I was working in those programs. I only noticed the advantage of the faster CPUs when I rendered or applied a filter. That means to me that the CPU doesn’t influence Maya (or any other 2D/3D program) as much as the video card. But, of course, if you work on long animated sequences then you also want to have the fastest CPU you can get.
LORT
what do you mean upgrade the prom?? where do i get it? what version??
what happens if i don’t upgrade the prom and i install a a couple pIII 700’s?
excuse me i don’t know much about this.
Hello bmagana,
check out the posting “Upgrade on a SGI 320” by Audun (10/20/00 06:53 PM)- it should be about 11 postings before this one. There I explain how to upgrade the PROM. You also mentioned something about adding PIII 700 to a 320…from what I know you can only use the Katmai PIII which goes from 450Mhz up to 600Mhz. You can’t use the Coppermine PIII, which I think starts at 533Mhz and goes up to a little beyond 1Ghz. To tell the difference, the Katmai PIII has 512Mb of cache memory, and it runs at half the processor speed. The Coppermine PIII has 256Mb of cache, but it runs at the same speed as the processor (like the Xeons). The Coppermine is manufactured differently than the Katmai, and from what I have been told by SGI tech support, the 320 doesn’t support the Coppermine. The settings I posted above for speeds of 650, 700, 750 and 800 are for Katmai PIII processors only, but I have never seen a Katmai PIII in that range. The fastest Katmai I know of is the 600Mhz. I don’t think Katmai processors faster than 600Mhz even exist. I think SGI put support in the 320 for faster processor speeds in anticipation of them eventually being made by Intel. Intel did of course make faster processors, but they went to a different manufacturing process than that used for the Katmai, and the new processor came to be known as Coppermine.
LORT