Hot New Silicon Graphics Workstations

Jonathan C. Patschke writes: "SGI have finally unveiled their newest-generation visual workstation, the Silicon Graphics Fuel. Features include a MIPS R14k CPU, Vpro graphics, and a PCI bus (finally)." As you would expect from SGI, it looks good, and the specs are impressive. I only see IRIX listed, but with the specs on this thing, it may not be slow :)

Comments

More like lukewarm

[Space cowboy]

SGI are still producing fantastic graphics architectures with next-to-nothing processing power behind them... Sheesh. What are they on ?

I work in the video/film post-production business. We are one of their major clientbases, and these machines will go down well in this niche area. Unfortunately, althoguh SGI get a lot of press for their "movie" image, it's not their money-spinner...

SGI get most of their money from government and research contracts. This machine will not cut the mustard in those areas - it's just too damn slow. Yes the CPU is probably a better performer than its Intel equivalent in MHz, but I just don't believe it'll get anywhere near the SPECfp and SPECint of the Athlon 2000 or Intel 2.2GHz CPUs.

It's a shame. I *really* like SGI machines. I've bought several (I donated one of them to libsdl just so SDL would support SGIs :-) but this machine is - to coin a phrase - too little, too late :-(

Simon.

Re:More like lukewarm

[AMuse]

This machine will not cut the mustard in those areas - it's just too damn slow.

I have to disagree. I work for a government research center who is still running some Indys and Challenge S series machines for some applications. The scientists there are worried less about speed, typically, and more about stability and function.

Speed is good, but increased function is even more important, and above all else it had better NOT crash on day 13 of a 14 day modeling operation.

Price/Performance

[sjbe]

Disclaimer. I spent the last three years working daily on an SGI Octane. I loved it and turned down several offers to "upgrade" to a Windows based system that in real terms was faster. SGI makes excellent systems which are by and large great to work with.

This new system looks great but unless I was trapped by some particular piece of software I still could never cost justify buying one. $12000+? Sorry. Even presuming that the real world performance is significantly ahead of a high end Pentium system (which I doubt) it's still more expensive, especially once you factor in the service contracts. Those will add several thousand a year. Not to mention that a "well equiped" version will cost much more in all likelyhood.

SGI makes great machines but as a business they are in a teeny-tiny little market niche that is being eroded far too quickly by commodity hardware. They manage to keep ahead for the super high end stuff but that never leaves much room to grow. Frankly I'm mildly astonished the company is doing as well as it is.

I'd love to play around with one of these new Fuel systems but I doubt I'll ever have the chance. There just are too few cases where anyone could justify buying one. Sad really...

What a piece of crap!!

[Uttles]

Single MIPS® 64-bit R14000A processor, 500 MHz with 2MB L2 cache or 600 MHz with 4MB L2 cache; 200 MHz front-side bus

OMG! Like, for real? Only 600 Mhz max? What kind of slack ass company makes a computer that slow these days? These people are totally lame! {/SARCASM}

Sorry for the trolling guys, hopefully some of you find it funny. I just thought I'd do my impersonation of 75% of the readers when they evaluate Macintosh specs. Anyway, happy modding!