[rescue] Wow, 30k Graphics Card From Sun

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 02:53:50PM -0400, nick at snowman.net wrote:
> I agree.  What the o2 really needed was to accept DDR, then it'd be a
> hell of a kickass system, but that would require entirely to much
> work.  Ehh, I can hope.

I think it was more complicated than that. When the O2 came out, it
was two things.  First it was a general purpose low end graphics
workstation.  Second it was a cutting edge unique machine that had
features that still cost 10s of thousands of dollars to try to
duplicate. 

Unfortunately, while the two identities that the O2 bore originaly
were compatible then, they are less compatible now.  The closest
"modern" system to the O2 seems to be the nForce and nForce2 based
machines, and I'm not entirely sure that they count (yes, texture
memory comes out of system ram, but is it possible to use 500+ megs
for textures in one scene?).  

The days when a low end machine can get away with using a software
renderer seem to be past.  And nobody seems interested in correct, but
farely slow hardware renderers any more either.  Once the O2 is gone,
we will be left with correct and fast (the Wildcats being one leading
instance, and the Sun Majc boards being another, not to mention the
remainder of the SGI line), or fast and sloppy (Radeons, Geforces,
etc). 

Anyway, my understanding was that SGI thought that DDR wouldn't be
responsive enough for the O2.  But then the nForce uses it (but is it
as fast or responsive as the O2 video system?).  

And once the O2 goes, we will have one less absolutely cool
unconventional risc machine out there.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd