[geeks] This would make a good workstation

[vance at neurotica.com]

On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> > Especially that quad-proc 1.4GHz POWER4+ version.  MMMmmmMMMmmmMMM
>
> We've "only" got the dual 1GHz machines here.  There are a couple quad
> 752MHz machines, but they're 660s.

Only.  Hehehehe.  If I only had $48K to buy one of these things.

> > I was thinking more along the lines of multiple GXT6500P's doing
> > multi-head.  *drool*
>
> That would be quite nice, I imagine.  I haven't actually ever used any
> of IBM's higher-end graphics options.  How do they stack up against the
> IMPACT and IR families from SGI?

I'm not sure about a direct speed comparison, but I know that the
featuresets are *completely* different.  The IBM cards are designed for
CAD, so they can do all sorts of complex interpolations and extrapolations
for taking measurements in CAD software.  It does all this stuff in
hardware.  I don't believe they're very good at texturing, but they run
like a scalded cat on wireframes.

Peace...  Sridhar