CompuServe Messages

micron p60

    26-Jan-94 18:39:56
Sb: #79144-micron p60
Fm: John Tissavary 71054,15
To: Bailey Brown 73020,3442
This is getting really wierd, if not ridiculous! I mean we're arguing about a machine (AXP) that doesn't even have commercial software of the type we need (3d animation) compiled for it, and extrapolating judgments based on what some guy recompiled a raytracing routine for. What do you know about his recompiling? I just can't feel right forming an objective opinion based on one person's benchmark. Also, I guess RISC processors aren't really that great, and SGI's really can't render that much faster than 486's, and that SGI's don't really dominate the high-end animation market because they really can't render faster and produce more (I hate to say this on the 3DS forum, because 3DS is SUPER DOOPER, I love it, and it does great things for me). As far as I (and many others, including those who use 3DS and PC's AS WELL AS SGI's and Wavefront, SoftImage, whatever) concerned, current crop RISC processors outperform 486's and Pentiums. If you're going to take the Sparc2 or lame assed R3000 as an example, why don't you compare them with a 386 or somehting? No animation firm in it's right mind would use processors that outdated in a production environment!!! Bailey, if you were faced with the hypothetical situtation of having an excellent animation package ported to both the Pentium and the AXP (including any speed processor they come up with, let's be fair, now), you mean to tell me that for an AXP that costs perhaps $500 to $2000 more than a comparable pentium you'd rather buy the pentium and have a slower machine? I'd say double rendering speed is a huge major big deal on any platform, and I would invest in the faster system if it was within my price range. I personally couldn't give a sh*t about SpecFP and SpecINT and whatever numbers, twice as fast is twice as fast! Forgive me if I missed the thrust of your post, or took it the wrong way, but RISC (SGI in particular) based animations system still off more than PC based animation systems (computers and software), and it really irritates me when people try and minimize or discount or claim this isn't so. John Tissavary (La Luna cie)