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falcon_za
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 11:26 am    Post subject: How good is sparc? Reply with quote

My laptop is getting old, and I am thinking of buying a desktop machine sooner or later. Since I am running gentoo all the time, and not particularly in love with x86 (i don't hate it though. I basicaly don't care), I am not tied to any particular architecture, so I was just wondering how good or bad are the other ones.

I hardly know anything about sparc, but it seems to me that this is a high quality platform.

Can you guys tell me what are the strong and weak points of a spark machine, compared to PPC or x86, the goal being running it as a general purpose wokrstation?
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adaptr
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 2:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One of the most obvious strong points is that it is 64 bits out of the box.
The older ones can be picked up for trifles on ebay, and will run Linux quite comfortably.

That all depends on what you intend to use it for, of course - hardware development is simply the fastest on the Intel/AMD platforms.

Also, a new Sparcstation will cost you an arm and two legs...
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GenTimJS
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 3:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The technical advantages of SPARC are mostly stuff you wouldnt notice in day to day use (unless you are doing number crunching on terabit data sets all the time...). Also, there is somewhat of a satisfaction some of us get knowing that our 4-8 year old SPARC has less legacy 1980s/1970s tech in it than a 4-8 DAY old x86 system ..

For performance, drawing a direct comparison is hard. YMMV in all cases, but I've found SPARC systems to be a little less than twice as fast as an x86 system at the same MHZ for CPU. Also realise however that if you get a Sun system, some models have crap chipsets (ultra5/10 comes to mind) which will limit speeds despite the high-performance CPUs. Also, if you get a sparc - max it's RAM out. The way the big-endian-ness and 64bit stuff is done on SPARC chugs a tad more ram that some of us would like it too.

For hardware support, YMMV again but some of us have had no problem with x86 PCI cards (nics, etc) and some of us have real bad luck. For graphics, you will very likely be limited to 2d acceleration without openGL if you are running Linux, as the xorg drivers for the sun frame buffers arent too great. That may change quickly however, with Sun moving from XSun to Xorg and with the open sourcing of Solaris10...

For individual systems,
Ultra1 - sux for speed, but ROCK solid reliability and low power consumption.
Ultra2 - Go SMP with 300s or better, and its ok for a desktop.
Ultra5/10 - semi-crap performance, but uses IDE disks (cheaper). First SPARC systems to use PCI. YMMV.
Ultra30 - not too upgradable but cheap these days.
Ultra60 - Good medium end system, great if you do SMP!
Ultra80 - Now we're talkin! quad-cpu capable! ... just track the electric bill ...
Blade1000/2000 - Powerhouse workstation, FCAL drives are F-A-S-T, 8 megs of L2 CPU cache, SMP capable up to 1.2ghz .... and an 875wt power supply ....
Newer stuff = if you have the cash, it does the math..


Just my 2 euros, again YMMV....
Oh yeah, and did I mention they dont have A20 gateways and other leftovers from 1976 ? ;-)
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Last edited by GenTimJS on Thu Jul 21, 2005 7:10 pm; edited 1 time in total
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chance2105
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 10:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

GenTimJS said:

Quote:
For graphics, you will very likely be limited to 2d acceleration without openGL if you are running Linux, as the xorg drivers for the sun frame buffers arent too great. That may change quickly however, with Sun moving from XSun to Xorg and with the open sourcing of Solaris10...


I'm not up at all on the Solaris community, but this intrigued me. After some quick googling, I can confirm this might actually be the case:

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/alanc?entry=xorg_6_9_and_71

Although "quickly" might be a misnomer and from what I understand Opensolaris isn't exactly a venture to improve Solaris on Sparc .. it's interesting to think that Creator and Elite cards may by fully exploited by future versions of Xorg with Sun's intervention.
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shickapooka800
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i think one of the best qualities of SPARC powered boxes is being overlooked...


they are just damn cool. think of how many people have an x86 machine (or a ppc machine). when a friend comes to by to use your machine, he will immedietly sit down and be in awe.

i would trade the greatest x86 comp for a mediocre SPARC powered comp, just becuase of this. its not the just horsepower, its the package deal.

sure it shallow way of looking at things. but damnit thats how the world works. you formulate opinions based on known comparisons.

oh ya, and if you have money comming out of your holes, think how cool you would be with a tadpole bullfrog! sure its heavier than a bag of bricks, nobody is going to have a dual 64bit processor laptop with a fuckton of RAM.... nobody.

since you have no bias in arch's, venture into the new world and get some big iron.
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falcon_za
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some sparc hardware looks cool. These bulfrogs not the least. But while I guess one should not compare sparc processors to x86 processors at the same frequency, I actualy have no idea how fast is a 1Gz sparc, for instance. In very rought numbers, how does it compare to x86 (including amd64) or power pc?
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GenTimJS
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 10:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ive used a 1ghz sparc (and own a 750mhz), and ive found it to be slightly less than twice as fast.
That is, in my own observation which did not include any numerical benchmarking, things "seemed" almsot twice as fast.
I'd guestimate 1ghz sparc apx = 1.6-1.7ghz x86
No idea about PPC, since I havent used anything newer than G3 :-(
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