Obsolete : SGI Buyer's Guide
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Buying SGIs
The<br>Right System
Buying an Indigo
Buying an Indigo²
Buying an Indy
Buying an O2
Buying an Octane
SGI Vendors
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The SGI Buyer's Guide
General<br>Information
Introduction
This<br>guide tries to help you when you want to buy an used SGI. First<br>it will try to help you deciding which system fits best<br>to your needs and then it will point out important items you should<br>care about when buying a machine.
Where to get Affordable SGI Machines
ebay
Okay this answer is rather short, but I really don't know other<br>alternatives (except you simply know people who want to get rid<br>off used systems) to get an inexpensive used SGI. You may also<br>google a bit, maybe there<br>is a reseller somewhere in your country. But in most cases resellers<br>do take more money than you would spend on ebay - in exchange<br>you get better support.
Actually I know of the following SGI resellers (of course this<br>is only a random selection). When you consider getting a machine<br>from them, it would be best tp write them an e-mail and ask for<br>a specific configurations, as in most cases the prices on their<br>website aren't up to date.
See my SGI Vendors page for more<br>information.
Selecting the Right System
The Indigo<br>is a nice small box, but mostly for collectors.<br>The Indigo was a real break through for SGI on the desktop<br>workstation market. Although it really looks nice and can perform<br>comparable to an Indy (depending on CPU and graphics) it is<br>mostly something for collectors, because the price/performance<br>ratio is worse than with most other used SGI machines.
The Indigo²<br>is a solid entry system, but you have to know about the details.<br>The Indigo² has many different flavours with different<br>processors and graphic options. A good Indigo² can be almost<br>as powerful as a single processor Octane, whereas a really bad<br>Indigo² isn't much faster than a good Indigo.
The Indy<br>is a cheap entry system to SGI.<br>The Indy is the ideal starter system for people who want to<br>have a closer look at SGIs and IRIX, because the Indy is a really<br>inexpensive computer that even can have a webcam (the famous<br>IndyCam) attached. But for serious business, an Indy may be<br>too slow.
The Octane<br>is the powerhouse of the desktop SGI machines.<br>The Octane isthe most powerful and expandable desktop machine<br>from SGI that often appears on ebay.<br>It can have up to two CPUs, three harddiscs and even two graphic<br>cards. An Octane is the ideal development plattform with lots<br>of power and ressources.
The O2 is<br>the well designed allrounder.<br>The O2 is a real allrounder - with its UMA architecture and<br>hardware texture mapping it is ideal for doing graphics business<br>and there is an inexpensive video option available that will<br>enable you to do even video editing. Plus it really looks great.
Comparison PC/SGI
The MIPS CPUs which are used in SGIs offer a very high floating<br>point performance - this is just the thing needed for 3D graphics.<br>I would guess a MIPS CPU is as fast as an Intel CPU with 1.5 times<br>MHz, that is a 195MHz R10000 is about as fast as a 300MHz Pentium<br>II. Plus the memory of an SGI is really fast, because it uses<br>a dual channel system (doubles the performance) as opposed to<br>many PCs.
But you really have to consider that most affordable SGI boxes<br>in the second hand market are already 6 years or older, don't<br>expect miracles. On the other hand, for an 6 year old system,<br>an Octane performs amazingly well.
IRIX
This is a very special section - in most ebay auctions you won't<br>get the IRIX CDs with the system, although IRIX is preinstalled<br>on the system. This has various reasons: First there are more<br>SGI systems out there than IRIX CD sets, simply because SGIs are<br>most used by big companies, which have hundreds of SGIs but only<br>need a dozen installation CDs. The second reason is that you don't<br>get a *license* with the CDs - the license is legally (not physically)<br>dongeled to your machine. That means you can install IRIX on your<br>machine, but that would not be really legal...
Of course there are also IRIX CD sets on ebay (don't get the<br>so called "IRIX Overlay Sets" with only 3 or<br>4 CDs - this is just an update, and you cannot use these systems<br>for installing IRIX on an empty disc. A full IRIX CD set has at<br>least 12!), but be prepared to spend another 100EUR on such a<br>set! On the...