SGI (graphics) vs PC (Nvidia)

[thekidcisco]

Guys,

What is the difference between rendering with a SGI box and a PC (Intel/Athlon)? Wouldn't the PC be a viable cheaper alternative?
If so what are the benefits with rendering on a SGI, and do they outweigh the benefits of the lower cost of rendering on a PC box?

What is the difference between a Quadro4 for rendering and a GeForce4? Wouldn't a GeForce4, be a viable cheaper alternative?

I'm going to start doing some animation - 3D models, for games mainly. And want to buy a box, just curious for people's input on the
above subject matter.

 

[WolfUmbra]

For the average consumer, PC is way cheaper, unless u go with (why) older SGI equipment. True, the modeling looks way better on the SG box, but can u afford it?

 

[rbhawcroft]

im not a sgi expert but from what i hear if your on any kind of budget go with wintel, and if you are doing television/ film level stuff where the exact quality matters a lot them sgi by far.

 

[Degenerate]

From what i know, not much difference. I head that SGi actually modifies motherboards and Cpu's.... not sure here

 

[CTho9305]

IIRC, you can turn a lot of normal geforces into quadros - the quadros do have more ram or higher clocks or something though (for gf2s). They just have a few features enabled/disabled.

About nvidia vs. SGI: professional cards tend to have lower fillrate, but higher polygon processing power. They are much more precise, too. gamers cards cut corners to achieve higher framerates, whereas professional cards render at a much higher level of accuracy/detail.

I can't remember where it was, but a couple weeks ago I read an interesting, detailed article about the differences between consumer and professional cards.

 

[rbhawcroft]

yeah but there must be more than hardware tweaks for teh diff, what about the types of software and tools available? after all the two platfoms go for basically different markets

 

[Sahakiel]

I could be wrong, but I think most rendering is done using OpenGL.
GF4's cannot be modded to Quadros. This time, they added some hardware features to the Quadro, so although Windows may detect it as a Quadro, it's not going to run like one.
In terms of performance, a GeForce card will let you do some light rendering pretty decently. However, when the scene gets more and more complex, especially with several light sources, professional graphics cards will blow away any gamer card. Also, AA is probably not readily available, and generally not desired with professional rendering since the pixel count will more than make up for it, so that's a lot of wasted silicon.

 

[Shalmanese]

Plus, if you buy a Quadro, you are GUARENTEED superb driver support whereas you would only expect it with a GF4. Same reason why people by Altholn MP's instead of XP's, the support.

 

[Nothinman]

Actually I don't know how true it is anymore. Lots of places (like ILM recently) are porting their software (most of them have inhouse built Irix software) to Linux and moving to cheapter and faster PCs. The change is easy because Irix software ports to Linux with almost no changes.

 

[thekidcisco]

Can any1 give me any links/urls/info for sold comparions?

Price is not really the matter. While ILM maybe doing the PC thing, guys who made Final Fantasy - the spirits within, were all using SGI boxes. So yeah, it's kinda of a grey area thing.

I'm starting a games company, that is why I wanted to know. Design can go indepth to really complex scenes to your average (not so average these days) fps model. I gues the good thing about doing it on a G4, you know how it will look like on most peoples GeForces cards. But if you used a Quadra, that might not be the case.

More research for me on the web I guess.
Thanks for info!!!

 

[rbhawcroft]

Originally posted by: thekidcisco
Can any1 give me any links/urls/info for sold comparions?



More research for me on the web I guess.
Thanks for info!!!

cisco it looks like you are really looking for a software platform and tools rather than anything else price.

 

[Nothinman]

Price is not really the matter. While ILM maybe doing the PC thing, guys who made Final Fantasy - the spirits within, were all using SGI boxes. So yeah, it's kinda of a grey area thing.

You know what that means? It means it doesn't matter. Get the system that does what you need it to, if a PC has all the software you need great, if you need something that runs on Irix well there ya go.

 

[lifeguard1999]

My staff does scientific visualization and 3-D modeling with Maya and 3D Studio Max. We have a huge budget and can afford SGI workstations. Instead we went with a dual 2.2 GHz Xeon solution. Why?

COST: The retail price of a full blown, top-of-the-line SGI workstation is about $48K. Compare that to $10K for a full blown, top-of-the-line Wintel workstation (Wildcat III 6110, dual flat panel 1600x1200 monitors, dual 2.2 GHz Xeon, 2 GB RDRAM, compilers, etc.) I can buy almost 5 times as many Wintel workstations as I can SGI workstations.

Performance: We ran our own benchmarks and saw that Maya ran faster on the Wintel platform than the SGI one. In viewing a series of time varying isosurfaces written with OpenGL/C++ code, the Wintel platform won with small test cases. An SGI server (Onyx2 with IR2 pipes) destroyed it when running large test cases. An HP SV-6 destroyed the SGI Onyx2, and had 64X anti-aliasing.

In the end I am buying Wintel workstations, and SGI server (for terabyte problems), and with the money I save, a 40 Xeon CPU render farm. (The Athlon render farm was cheaper, but their is a bias against AMD culturally.)

 

[Nothinman]

a 40 Xeon CPU render farm. (The Athlon render farm was cheaper, but their is a bias against AMD culturally.)

It would probably do you well to get the Xeons with 2M cache anyway, something AMD doesn't offer.

 

[ProviaFan]

Since we're on the topic of SGI, would it be worthwhile to get an older, used SGI workstation, or would it be too outdated to run a recent release of IRIX? Or would I be better off saving the money and using it for a professional level gfx card for my current PC?