[geeks] sgi i2 opengl/glut perf question

[Daniel Johannsson]

Hi,
I've noticed that there seem to be a few sgi users around the list so perhaps
someone has some words of wisdom to share about this.

A couple of months back I got my first sgi with the intention to do a bit
of opengl/glut programming on a box where I wouldn't have to deal with the lack
of real hardware acceleration.  The plan was/is to do some textured terrain
stuff, just for play.  To get a little bit of an idea of what kind of perf
to expect I opened an .iv file that was a 100x100 triangle mesh, flat shaded.
That thing is fairly slow (20fps) at rotating/moving the mesh imho, and a 
300x300 mesh was totally unacceptable (3fps).

The question basically is, even though an i2 high impact + tram may have been
a powerfull gl box back in 96 am I insane to expect decent perf for a modern
use like large meshes?  Is it perhaps just ivview that is old and slow and
would custom gl/glut stuff (compiled with gcc) be much faster?
Would I just be better off using a pc with mesa on linux? (No, I don't want to
start a pc vs. sgi argument war).
I did use a mesa/linux setup a few years ago, back when there was no hardware
accel, and performance then was very slow.

The machine specs are the following:
Indigo 2 R10k 195mhz
192mb
High Impact + Tram
Irix 6.5.10m

The .iv file in question was:
http://www.futuretech.vuurwerk.nl/depot/ss78ne_d100.iv.gz

So, if anyone has any advise on what kind of box to do this on please share
the info.
Thanks,

Dan