[PD] SGI/IRIX

[derek holzer]

hi olaf,

these are some pretty interesting "benchmarks", espc in regards to the 
performance of your SGI! it inspired me to do some late night shopping 
for old SGI machines here in holland. seems you can pick up a 200 MHz 
Octane, or a dual 150 MHz, for something like EUR 350-400. this is 
interesting, because i intend to equip a Linux-based media lab sometime 
in the future, so i hope you don't mind if i ask some basic questions...

like:

can you use linux, or only IRIX? if linux is runnable, which distro? i 
get conflicting info when i google around as to whether or not there are 
working linux ports for SGI machines.

how is general audio performance on this machine? i was quite amazed at 
the cpu speed-to-pd performance ratio. i know that SGIs were intended 
mainly as rendering machines, so i assume that they have some kinds of 
optimization in the processor for floating point numbers, etc etc. i saw 
that you use pd 0.36 over 0.37 for reasons of the Portaudio... are other 
problems you have noticed regarding software incompatibilities?

if you are buying an older SGI, like one of the first series O2s or 
Octanes, how is support for more modern PCI cards, like soundcards or 
firewire cards?

last question: are SGIs more efficient with RAM? it seems like all the 
machines i saw were pretty low in this dept [maybe that's why there are 
cheap!]

thanks + best,
d.

>-------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>G3 400MHz (internal audio, 44.1kHz):
>
>- pd 0.36 w/o -rt flag: 
>   - 1x osc~ - dropouts when moving windows
>   - 140x osc~ - constant audio dropouts that get heavier when 
>                 moving the mouse
>
>- pd 0.36 with -rt flag:
>   - 1x osc~ - dropouts when moving windows
>   - 340x osc~ - constant audio dropouts that get heavier when 
>                 moving the mouse
>
>
>SGI Octane R12k 300MHz (internal analogue IO, 44.1kHz):
>
>- pd 0.36 w/o -rt flag: 
>   - 220x osc~ - audio dropout when moving windows
>
>- pd 0.36 with -rt flag:
>   - 500x osc~ - no audio drops but watchdog kills Pd when moving 
>                 windows (92% CPU usage reported by top)
>
>
>Pentium 4, 1.8GHz (Motu 828, 44.1kHz, asio driver):
>- pd 0.36 (no -rt flag, of course): 
>   - 248x osc~ - audio dropouts when moving windows (about 70% CPU)
>
>- pd 0.36 set to realtime with task manager:
>   - 248x osc~ - audio dropouts when moving windows (they sound a
>                 bit different and the gui is slower...)
>
>
>
>  
>