[rescue] Mmmmm SGI

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 10:58:56PM -0700, Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez wrote:
> 
> > > The Wildcat is better at 2D (I wish it were better still, but that is 
> > > something else).  In particular, it accelerates OpenGL imaging, including
> > > hardware convolutions (usefull for many of the operations that programs
> > > like photoshop do, from filters to the magic wand).  But, for $2k, you have
> > > to be doing something more than photoshop to make it worthwhile.
> > 
> > Not that photoshop uses OpenGL for anything.... so big deal.
> 
> Maybe Photoshop would if it could count on OpenGL imaging being there, which 
> I believe it isn't on a lot of OpenGL implementations for Windows, and I 
> don't know if it currently exists on MacOSX.

Yeah, but this is the real world. Adobe already supports altivec for the
G4, so any speed gain by using the wildcat as a coprocessor would be
marginal. Therefore this is a moot point.
 
> > Yeah.. and then you have to redesign the whole motherboard only to fit
> > those wildcats, they need AGPpro! Which is not cost effective for the
> > amount of people that might be interested in seeing a wildcat under OSX
> 
> Wildcats come in more than just AGPpro (but not to common users).  The 
> wildcats used in Suns and the Wildats used in Alpha neither use AGP.

Nope, they use PCI (or PCI64). And those are the bottom of the line
wildcats, not the 5xx0's.

  Besides,
> isn't AGPpro just add higher voltage?  Easy enough to run a seperate line
> from the power supply to the card rather redo the mobo.

AGPpro boards require an extended connector. So now you propose to redo
the gfx board?
  
> > Apple has bought some Videocard maker recently. Supposedly they are
> > developing their own high end gfx board....
>  
> > http://www.architosh.com/news/2002-04/2002c1-0412-applegraph1.phtml
> 
> Interesting.  That talks about a dual chip nvidia based card.  Faster yes,
> but doesn't show any signs of being higher quality.

They never said that the gfx processor was going to be nVidia's...
Although I agree that having some real 3d boards for OSX would kick some
ass. But I don't think the market for them is big enough, I dunno how many
modelling/cad packages have been ported to OSX to justify the invesment
from both parties. Maybe they will do something interesting for the G5,
that should be a real workstation class processor.