hallo all,
I´m thinking of buying a second hand Sgi machine for Blender
has anybody experience with Blender and SGI
I.e Which one is best suited O2, Indigo etc + Graphix
Thanx in advance
Blender runs fine on Irix. But it is not as fast as one would expect - regarding SGIs as the graphics-machines.
I wouldn’t buy an SGI only for blender. But if you want to get one for other reasons, it can handle Blender as well.
On an 100 MHz Indigo R4K with XS24 Graphics Blender runs about the same speed as on a Pentium II 350MHz with Matrox Millenium G200. (This was tested under Linux, because under Windows Blender is extremely slow on this computer - Does anyone know why??).
On an Octane2 with V6 graphics Blender is slower!! than on a XEON 1500MHz with 3dlabs Wildcat II 5110
Holger
Thanx Holger (nice Beer photo on your Website!!)
well, it´s about power for the Euro…
if i can pick up an
SGI Octane Octane/SI R10000 195MHZ/1MB for
around 400 €
is it faster , better than my current machine
Athlon 1000 with a Fire Gl 1 and sometimes a E & S 1200 Lightning
for Blender ?
Thanx
Hmm, difficult to say… I never used Blender on one of these machines… But the mentioned Octane is not the fastest one and I was very dissapointed about Blenders speed even on Octane2. I don’t think that you get better Blender performance on the Octane than on your PC. It might also depend on the models you want to render. If you have lots of polygons, the SGI could have some advantages.
Nevertheless the Octane is a great machine. And probably a PC with similar power costs more than 400€!
Holger
PS: Even if it’s slower than the PC, I think I would buy the Octane. Just to have one. 
“Even if it’s slower than the PC, I think I would buy the Octane. Just to have one”
and it looks good as well !!! 
Thanx anybody else have experience with SGI Versus Athlon / Penti ?
Jeeze, there is a sucker born every minute.
so what would you go for with 400 Euros / $ ´s ?
Have you had any exp with SGI ?
remember that mentioned Octane has no texture memory!!! (I don’t think BLender uses it anyway, but just wanted to inform you that the lower graphic subsystems of the Octanes have no dedicated texture memory unless you add some)
I am running Blender on a SGI Onyx RE2 Quad R10K and on an Onyx2 IR3, though only sometimes since I am mainly working in Maya on both machines.
The problem I have is that blender does not scale over the CPUs, but I have to say I am kinda happy with the performance, though many advantages of the graphics subsystems are not used.
I advice you to get that Octane since the price is really low!
Plus, IRIX is a damn fast workin environment, though you have to get used to it.
I had and Octane but I never ran Blender on it, so I can’t comment on it.
I just had the opportunity to blender on the octane2 again. 
This time I did some modelling while last time I only used the Octane 2 for rendering. It seems now that the OpenGl surface is much faster than on the PC. So modelling and building up the szene is more “fluent” on the SGI.
On the other side when it comes to rendering the final result, the PC needs about a third less time per frame.
Holger