SGI Octane or 64-bit PC with Linux?

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

I am looking at my hardware options for a modeling and editing machine,
and have come to a fork in the road.

I can either get an SGI Octane and max out the RAM and graphics board
options (MXE I think), or I can build a 64-bit Linux box with something like
an nVidia Quadro FX card. If it were you, which option would you go with?

Thanks in advance,

— spurious

[kuban]

Octane MXE can not race with QuadroFX cards, a Linux PC will be a lot faster both on wireframe and texture fill performance. If you plan to use a 3D software. So for modeling definetely go PC! Also the CPU’s of the Octane is I guess 600Mhz at maximum nowadays, and those processors should cost a fortune, when compared to P4 processors! Altough they have very high performance at that frequency, compared to P4. But still a 3Ghz P4 is a hell faster on many things compared to R14k-600Mhz

For editing, Octane is a very different platform. The softwares are very expensive. And also the video hardwares. A DIVO board should cost $3k at least, 2nd hand. I have seen as much as $6500 for the DIVO board, on a dealer website.

If you are looking for a cheaper workstation, definetely stay on Linux, if it meets your needs. Also smoke on linux will be appearing nowadays, just for SD resolution. NO HD! But I heard the prices will be $60k for smoke on linux, for turnkey systems.

hope these info helps,

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your advice. I looked on NewEgg.com, and I think I’ll be able to put together
a nice film-oriented system for about what I was going to spend on the Octane; and as
you say, it will be much faster. I keep hearing that Linux is growing in popularity in the
movie industry, and can’t wait to see more commerical software offerings for it.

Thanks again.

[Author]

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