CompuServe Thread

Hi there, I've been in a hardware architecture dicussion for a week know with a variety of people here on the forum and wonder if I can get some items clarified before I lay out the big bucks for MAX hardware: 1. What processor should we use: Alpha, Mips, or Pentium/P6? Rendering time is paramount. Obviously multi-processor is necessary but what chips are going to be supported? I can get Sun Sparcs for $2K and DEC 275Mhz Alphas for $5K. 2. Is a fast OpenGL card important? I understand that MAX will have a preview mode and that should access the OpenGL architecture (I think). However, I think the real question is will MAX's rendering engine access the OpenGL hardware to assist in rendering? If so then we need to be looking for a super card or cards. 3. How about running MAX on SGIs? This came about from a demo I did of the SGI Indigo2 Extreme with the brand new video subsystem two weeks ago. They did real time rendering and shading at 30fps. But it wasn't final output. If thats not enough, they have another new video system coming out the 4th quarter that promises 2-3 times the speed of the just released system. Thanks for the help.