Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!eecg.toronto.edu!drb
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: drb@eecg.toronto.edu (David R. Blythe)
Subject: Re: Just how fast are these things, anyway?
Message-ID: <1991Apr29.015628.6987@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Keywords: Speed, GL, Benchmarks
Organization: EECG, University of Toronto
References: <558@rosie.NeXT.COM>
Date: 29 Apr 91 05:56:28 GMT
Lines: 16

In article <558@rosie.NeXT.COM> daves@martha (Dave Springer) writes:
>I would like to know just exactly how fast a PI is, and all the other machines  
>SGI makes.  When I say "how fast" I mean how many 10-pixel marketing lines can  
>you _really_ get from a client app to the screen; how many 100-pixel marketing  
>triangles can you _really_ get, etc. (this includes GL overhead,  
>transformations, clipping, and so on).  Please include price information, like  
>"On a PI that costs $15,000, you can get 2000 smooth-shaded polygons per sec,  
>with 3 lights".  Obviously I can get some numbers from the marketing  
>literature, but I get enough lies as it is.  Please respond directly to  

From my experience the "marketing" numbers are pretty accurate, at least I
can get the claimed performance if I sweat over my code for a few hours.
Oddly enough, I noted the literature now rates the performance of a 4D/70GT
at 60K polygons/sec up from 40K polygons/sec.  The result of crafty microcoding
and new gl primitives?
	-drb