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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!helena.MT.net!nate From: nate@trout.sri.MT.net (Nate Williams) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison) Date: 9 Jan 1996 23:37:29 GMT Organization: SRI Intl. - Montana Operations Lines: 64 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <4cuu7p$bgp@helena.MT.net> References: <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <4crnbe$8a@olympus.nwnet.net> Reply-To: "Nate Williams" <nate@sneezy.sri.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: trout.sri.mt.net Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1867 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:2003 comp.unix.solaris:56756 comp.unix.aix:68291 In article <4crnbe$8a@olympus.nwnet.net>, Anthony D'Atri <aad@nwnet.net> wrote: >>Method: I have compared the three different platforms on price using >>specific manufacturers' system prices > >You used *LIST* prices? Unix-architecture machines are often sold at steep >discounts. Which vendor do you work with? If the vendor, eg., Sun, won't give you the usual 20-40% discount >off of list, then you can do at least as well by buying equivalent machines >from somebody like Axil, Integrix, or Tatung. When you're an individual or a small organization, they *don't* give big discounts. >I've recently read that some (many? most?) of the MS-DOS-architecture machines >can't cache more than, say, 64M or 128M of memory, and that memory above >that will be uncached. This is both amazing and scary. Be careful that your 'MS-DOS-architecture' attitudes don't affect your attitudes too much. I've got an 'MS-DOS-architecture' workstation sitting next to me that *blows* away every SUN workstation in all aspects in my entire organization. At one point, SRI owned 25% of the workstations Sun sold. :) >o You're throwing in framebuffers that are almost certainly not comparable. > For a network-services machine, you don't need *any* graphics device for > a Sun, at least. Most PC's don't need one either, except for the console. > The graphics hardware in Suns is generally a much different > beast from the price-point cheap stuff in an MS-DOS-market machine. The > latter rarely can usably support a million pixels, and probably don't offer > the speed and acceleration that the Sun card probably does. Actually, the newer PC cards are much faster (and about an order of magnitude cheaper) than anything you can get from SUN. Again, in the PC next to me I've got a card that can do 1600x1200@16.7K colors@76Hz refresh. How much do you think will charge for that? (I paid less than $500 for it) But, as was stated fast graphics card are worthless in a server. > that's another mistake. MS-DOS machines seem to rarely be sold with decent > monitors. I rarely see one as large as 17", and they're almost always > spherical, and almost always can't handle even close to 1M pixels without > flickering. When's the last time you bought a PC, '89? Methinks you need to go look through any PC magazine and look. I don't think you can get non-flat monitors anymore which can't do 1024x768 non-interlaced. PC's have come a long way since the original IBM PC. Don't discount them just because they have been running crappy OS's in the past. Nate -- nate@sneezy.sri.com | Research Engineer, SRI Intl. - Montana Operations nate@trout.sri.MT.net | Loving life in God's country, the great state of work #: (406) 449-7662 | Montana. home #: (406) 443-7063 | A fly pole and a 4x4 Chevy truck = Heaven on Earth