[TriLUG] SGI replacement advice

[Matt McGrievy]

Hi All,

I've been tasked with pricing out some replacements for SGI O2s and 
Octanes, which mostly run crystallography and NMR applications.  I'm 
trying to determine whether to stick with SGI hardware (with either 
MIPS/IRIX or Intel/Linux), or find a high-end Linux workstation with a 
very beefy graphics card.  For reference sake, we're looking in the 
range of the SGI Tezro or Prism.  So in trying to determine whether we 
could move to a comparable Linux workstation, I have a couple of 
questions...

1) Are SGIs still way out in front of everyone else in terms of graphics 
performance?  I've read the specs on V10 and V12 frame buffers, but I 
can't really parse them well enough to compare them with a high-end 
ATI/NVidia card.  It's especially difficult since the Prism uses an ATI 
card.  Hard to know what the difference will be (and obviously frame 
buffers are not my forte).

2) Is anyone using SGI's version of Linux?  I'm wondering if it's 
derived from an existing distribution or if they've custom built something.

3) Are there particular PC vendors who are considered leaders in 
graphics workstations that would be suitable for a work environment.  We 
could build workstations, but we'd want hardware maintenance and such.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,
Matt