[rescue] The best 'rescue' workstation

[Jochen Kunz]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:06:46 -0400 (EDT)
Nathan Raymond <nate at portents.com> wrote:

> Hmmm, I've noticed that the B2000 and C3000 (also 400Mhz PA8500)
> sometimes go for under $100 with hard drives, video, and memory on
> ebay.
A friend got some B2000 boxes for 80,-EUR each. (256 MB RAM and 9 GB
disk)

> For a bit more, they come with the FX6 graphics card - is this worth
> the extra money? I am not familiar with HP's graphics cards at all.
> And is the FX6 supported by Linux?
AFAIK Visualize-FXe is the only option supported by Linux. I don't know
about performance, but I suspect a FX6 is considerable faster then FXe.
Some of the FX[0-9] options have not less then 4 PA-RISC CPU cores as
geometry engines. See http://www.openpa.net/gfx.html#visfx

> How would it compare to my Sun U60 (dual 300Mhz UII, dual Creator
> 3D-M3, 2GB RAM) or SGI Indigo 2 (200Mhz R10k, 1GB RAM, Max Impact)?
A 400 MHz PA-8500 will run circles around a 300Mhz US II. Most likely
the single 400 MHz PA-8500 will be as fast as the two 300Mhz US II
together. Don't know about the Creator, but given that Sun GFX options
are knowen to be not the fastest around and that HP has build some quite
high end GFX options like IBM or SGI...

The SGI Indogo2 will loose. It's CPU is only 1/3 as fast as the 400 MHz
PA-8500, it is throttled by the low memory and IO bandwith of the
Indigo2 and a FX[0-9] should be faster then an IMPACT. Keep in mind that
the Indigo2 is one generation older then the B2000. The B2000 is
comparable to an Octane or Fuel.
--


tsch|_,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/