[rescue] point of pride in SGI R10k vs. 1Ghz x86...

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Nov 12, 2001 at 09:44:51PM -0500, Brian Hechinger wrote:
> > He played with it, zipped up a couple layers, then went into Fractal
> > generation, then later added a Plasma layer and finished up with
> > Gimpressionist.  All of these take some serious CPU time, especially
> > when doing a 1280x1024 true color image.
> > 
> > It was almost as fast as his shiny new 1Ghz Athlon, he said.  Say equal
> > to a 900Mhz Athlon.  His Athlon has the DDR RAM btw as well.
> > 
> > So the R10k in this case feels as fast as something with 4-5 times the
> > clock speed of x86.
> 
> keep in mind that the R10K isn't doing all the work.  that's what the gfx H/W
> is for.  that's what makes them SGI machines. :)

Are you sure about that?  Sure, properly written software can use the 
hardware to great effect (like for doing the layering previews in 
hardware, etc), but I didn't think that the gimp was such a package, since 
that would mean OpenGL dependence, and I don't remeber that being one of 
the dependencies (not to mention that it would be rather unusual for this 
caliber application).

Further, if it was a solid impact machine, which is my memory of what the 
machine talked about was, it doesn't do texturing, which would mean that 
the hardware would get used even less.

It is important to note that just because an SGI can do something, that 
doesn't mean that the software for it does.  This tends to be what 
seperates programs like Premiere from smoke*, and Photoshop from amazon 
paint (don't have confirmation that amazon paint uses GL, but I think it 
would be a good bet).

That said, an SGI should still make for snappier screen updates, but not 
as snappy as could be if the programmers would fully utilize GL.

Of course, that opens up a whole other set of grievences (ie, GL being too 
buggy on PC platforms at least). 

Speaking of which, the Win32 ATI OpenGL drivers are awefull.  Are the 
Solaris/Sparc ATI GL drivers any better?

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd