[Irinikus]

The SGI that's unexpectedly impressed me the most from a performance point of view, is my dual 600MHz Octane2 fitted with V12 graphics. (It's a pity that these things have to be so rare and expensive, as it's more than capable of handling most loads in my opinion!)

The Onyx2, just doesn't seem to be as nimble for everyday tasks (I don't know why?), however in Blender tests it scales correctly, and the Quad 1GHz Tezro's performance is no surprise.

For what it is, the Dual 600MHz Octane2 flies!!! (It's more nimble than you'd expect it to be!  ) It's also allot quieter than a Tezro!

I ran my system up yesterday and it was an absolute pleasure to use!!!

[kaigan]

I was pleasantly surprised at how fast an Indy can be on 6.5.22 with a 180MHz R5000SC and maximum RAM. Much like the dual 600 MHz Octane2, it's at the top of the spec list and not the most common thing. From any sort of benchmarks, it would get trounced by newer systems but it does feel relatively snappy. It goes to show how capable these machines can be despite their age.

[jpstewart]

I was shocked by my Indigo's performance.  It's got a 100MHz R4000 and 96MB RAM, so those specs aren't much.  But the machine runs IRIX 4.0.5, and for that era, those specs are simply amazing and it shows.  It's very responsive and can do all kinds of stuff that a PC of the time never could have. 

So, keeping in mind the age of the machine and running appropriate software, I was very impressed.

[jan-jaap]

I was shocked by my Indigo's performance.  It's got a 100MHz R4000 and 96MB RAM, so those specs aren't much.  But the machine runs IRIX 4.0.5, and for that era, those specs are simply amazing and it shows.  It's very responsive and can do all kinds of stuff that a PC of the time never could have. 

You know what they said about the Indy (and IRIX 5.x): It's an Indigo without the go. An Indigo2 R4400 running IRIX 4.0.5H is even more zippy.

If you have a workload that will scale to a lot of CPUs my deskside Challenge L with it's 12x R10K CPUs, 2GB RAM and 15K RPM disks is quite a brute. And it makes a very satisfying deep humming noise while doing it's job. You can tell it means business.

[opcode]

I remember installing 6.5 using a 2x CDROM... I often think of opening a BDSM night club and having people wear gimp masks and collars... When we get down to business, I sit them in front of an Indigo1 R4k 100MHz with that 2x cdrom and a stack of IRIX 6.5 and .22 overlays with all the extras and compilers and have them get to work while whipping them

[Intuition]

After acclimating to my o2 and just being used to its performance I was quite surprised how snappy the Octane was. It was already snappy with the default 195 single proc it came with. When I upgraded it to the dual 400mhz it was even better. I think its definitely the most smooth SGI computer I have used. Not that I have used many.

[dihhuit]

I only have one datapoint, and that's my (currently not running) Octane. Despite being from the mid 90s, and having such a low clock speed, the thing was really quite responsive and pleasant to use. I think it's a combination of efficient architecture and a bygone era before hyper-bloated software. Trying to get it back up and running so I can use it again as my daily *nix box. It's technically several orders of magnitude less powerful than my current primary machine, but I hardly notice (unless I try to run Quake or something).

[Jacques]

Dual Octane, just about any of them! They are very snappy and with 256mb ram+ perform very well on .22 and above.

On the O2 front, 6.3 with a 300Mhz R5k is faster and more responsive than 6.5.

[jan-jaap]

When you realize that those specs are untrue, it's even better   It's actually a clock-doubled 50 ...

It's not untrue, but a typical case of engineering dept vs. marketing droids.

For all CPUs before the R4000, the internal and external clock of the CPU were the same. A 33MHz R3000 runs both the CPU core and the SysAD bus at 33MHz.

CPU core speed ramped up quickly in the early nineties, but running the rest of the mainboard at those speeds wasn't possible. Hence the clock doubled CPUs. Everybody did it, I mean, who still remembers the 66MHz 486DX?

The engineering folks called it a 50MHz R4000, because it ran the external interface at 50MHz. The marketing people realized bigger numbers looked better and the marketing people won.

Of course multipliers are still used. For today's CPU they can be a factor 20 I think.

[hamei]

It's not untrue, but a typical case of engineering dept vs. marketing droids.

I was mostly pulling jp's chain

But the 150 mhz upgrade was certainly nice. That made the Indigo just about as useful as a lot of low-end Indigo2's, in a lot nicer package. If I could only have one, that'd probly be the one I'd choose.

I personally liked the R5-180 Indy. Ian's benchmarks show it as slower but I swear it'd kick an entry-level O2's butt. And it didn't fall apart if you looked at it cross-eyed. I swear, the O2 was the cutest thing ever, and the most unreliable.