[SunRescue] SGI Indigo 2 Impact or Extreme?

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Bjrn Ramqvist wrote:

> Don't forget the oh-so-awful I/O on that bugger. If you've lived in the
> fast lane for a while, you don't even want to touch this one, especially
> since you constantly remind yourself that "it's a R10000 sitting in
> there".
> I can understand this was a marketing thing just to "protect the
> customers investments".

Yes, I agree.  The R10k I2 is hobbled by the memory bus architecture, but
still less so than on the O2.

I'd much rather take an R4400 I2 at this point as the bang per buck is
better.  Same with the R5k O2, it's a better deal and if you really need
CPU power then SGI's low end is not the place to look.

The R10k is a great chip but it's best at home in bigger iron.

> And oh yes, I'd probably still take an Indigo 2 over the O2, just
> because of the texture support.

And Max also outperforms CRM for T&L.  The O2 will still shine if you give
it big enough textures or do lots of glCopyPixels() calls (which are
unbelievably fast on the O2 due to the UMA).

> I'd take an O2 over an Indigo 2 just because of the (much) lesser noise,
> far better I/O and somewhat PCI-support.

It is a neat box.  I like the imposing look of the purple I2 better
myself.

-James