[geeks] sgi i2 opengl/glut perf question

[Dave McGuire]

On December 12, Daniel Johannsson wrote:
> 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?

  Well first of all, gcc's code generation SUCKS on MIPS processors.
Bigtime.  Use SGI's cc on those machines.

> 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

  Were R10K/195s even shipping in 1996?  That machine has GREAT BIG
HAIRY BALLS by this year's OR last year's standards.  I'd say there's
an optimization issue here.  And maybe a bit of a memory
shortage...192MB isn't much under recent releases of IRIX.

    -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL