*BSD News Article 90455


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From: fastbit@earthlink.net
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 00:06:22 -0800
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Mikhail Teterin wrote:

> 
> Nope. PentiumPRO-200 with 512 cache, lots of RAM and disks, decent
> video will cost you 6-8K$ at most. Add $200 dollars for a commercial
> OpenGL X-server from XInside (no hardware OpenGL acceleretion) and
> you are in bussiness. You can not even get O2 with R5000 for this
> kind of money, and they are slower -- you need a much pricier 10000s
> to match...
> 
> My claim is based on comparision between the said PPro box runing
> FreeBSD and old R4400 SGI workstation, which has 5 times more memory
> (I aproximate the speed of newer O2s to the best of my knowledge).
> TCL (compiled with ``-O2 -mips2'' flags is 2-2.5 times slower on
> our scripts).
> 

Oh, yeah ?  Instead of "approximating", have you actually tried the O2
for a spin ?
The O2 with 128MB simply FLIES; there is no comparison with 200Mhz PPro
boxes,
not even dual 200Mhz PPro boxes.  The speed with which you can do
texturing and 
VRML stuff is simply amazing for that kind of low-end box.
 You can get a standard issue O2 with 64Mb mem, 2GB disk for around $6K,
spend about $800 for 64MB more memory; another $1200 for a fast 4GB
drive and so for around $8K you have a hell of a machine that will beat
the s**t out any $15K PPro box.