From: bm@cs.columbia.edu (Blair MacIntyre) Subject: Re: PROD: ULTRA Sparc Creator 3D Date: 28 Mar 1996 15:55:21 -0500 Message-ID: Organization: Columbia University From: bm@cs.columbia.edu (Blair MacIntyre) >>>>> On Thu, 28 Mar 1996 08:24:17 +0100, Hubert LE VAN GONG >>>>> said: Hubert> We're about buying computers to develop Hubert> virtual environment and we would like to Hubert> know if someone experienced the new Sun's workstation Hubert> called Ultra Sparc Creator 3D and to which Hubert> SGI it could be compared in term of graphical performance Hubert> (Indigo2 High IMPACT ?). We have both. If you are not using textures, the Creator3D gets more polygons per second than the High IMPACT. The Maximum IMPACT will get slightly more than the Creator. The advantage of the Creator is: - you get to use Solaris, not IRIX (which, as variations of Unix go, blows) :-) - the video output is more flexible "out of the box" (more modes to chose from). Plus, the guys at sun helped me set it up in a non-standard mode and should eventually have a program out that will allow it to be set up in any mode you want (using similar timing parameters as you would use on XFree86 on a PC). SGI politely tells you, if you dare phone them and haven't paid for tech support, that they will make a video mode file if you pay them. Thanks. - the overall machine is faster than the fastest Indigo2. The downside is that they don't have the same level of texture map support, which might be bad for VR. Also, OpenGL is still in Beta, it hasn't been released yet. I like ours, as you can tell. -- Blair MacIntyre (bm@cs.columbia.edu), Graduate Student (Graphics and UI Lab) smail: Dept. of Computer Science, 450 Computer Science Building, 500 W 120 St. Columbia University, New York, NY 10027