Serious question here

[sbagman]

Hi all,

I have a problem. I don't know very much about computers, yet I use them quite often. We have two types of systems where I work for doing our research... Silicon Graphics workstations and Linux systems. What is the difference between these two systems? Which is the more powerful? Where can I get this kind of information to compare the two systems?

Cheers,
Sbagman.

 

[trevmartini]

You really are not providing much info here, if the Silicon machine is anything like this,
http://www.sgi.com/workstations/octane2/tech_spec.html

it is a pretty serious machine, as a matter of fact it is unreal.
You are talking 64bit with processing speed measured in mips
(millions of instructions per second), along with a 10k SCSI hd, this is more like an OS390 mainframe then a workstation. In short this platform absolutely rocks.

As far as a 'Linux' workstation this is unclear. There are many versions of Linux which is a operating system and not a platform. I imagine a Linux OS running on the above platform would be at least as good and probably faster and more stable.

Need more info here.

 

[sbagman]

Originally posted by trevmartini
You really are not providing much info here, if the Silicon machine is anything like this,
http://www.sgi.com/workstations/octane2/tech_spec.html

it is a pretty serious machine, as a matter of fact it is unreal.
You are talking 64bit with processing speed measured in mips
(millions of instructions per second), along with a 10k SCSI hd, this is more like an OS390 mainframe then a workstation. In short this platform absolutely rocks.

As far as a 'Linux' workstation this is unclear. There are many versions of Linux which is a operating system and not a platform. I imagine a Linux OS running on the above platform would be at least as good and probably faster and more stable.

Need more info here.

Yes, the machines are similar to that of the Octane. I am more interested in the processor speed of these Silicon Graphics machines versus, say, a top line PC with a Linux setp-up. I have been told that the processors in the SGIs have been overtaken in recent years by PCs, and the SGIs have the advantage purely on the graphics side of things. Secondly, I have also been told that the way the SGIs process is somehow completely different to PCs.

I guess the crux of the issue is, when comparing the Octane with the other machines we have here, which have i686 processors with 1330MHz CPU, when it comes to processing speed, which is better?

Sorry I don't know much about it, but I'm trying to learn as I go along!

Cheers,
Sbagman.

 

[trevmartini]

sorry, dp

 

[trevmartini]

What kind of apps are you running? Are you working with extensive graphics or crunching numbers? The PCs you mention
are running at 1.3 ghz which by todays standards is almost outdated as far as cutting edge goes. Also without knowing the type of HDisk setup (SCSI or not), the type of video card, Ram etc it is impossible to say for sure. With the Silicon machines the specs show that they are optimized for blazing fast numerical processing and very intricate graphical applications.

Most importantly the CPU speed is almost a non-issue in most cases, the CPU will eventually 'bottleneck' if the video or other hardware in the machine can't handle it. When a pc is running hard it is only as fast as the slowest component in your system. Basically it will spend a lot of time 'waiting' for the data it crunches to pass through the pipeline. The silicon machine seems to be built to prevent this from happening as it is engineered high speed all the way through.

Sorry, but it really is impossible to say, what feels faster to you? Try both and work a couple of days on each and decide from there. Personally I would love to see what that Silicon station could do. Its engineering is top notch.