does SGI still use ATI R3xx in its highend graphics systems?

[Megadrive1988]

the SGI Onyx4 Ultimate Vision uses upto 32 (or at least 16) of ATI's R3xx VPUs. that was as of 2003. those systems came out probably in late 2003 or early 2004. does anyone know if SGI upgraded to R420/R480 class yet, or will they upgrade to R520 class? SGI also said that if Nvidia solutions made more sense in a year (back in 2003) that they could switch. any sign of SGI moving upto newer ATI or Nvidia V|GPUs?

 

[KimB]

Well, looks like they have some new products out, but I can't seem to get much specific info from their website. Perhaps looking harder will solve that, but I don't feel like it right now.

Anyway, from what I could gather, it does seem they are using ATI FireGL graphics cards, but what model I couldn't tell. Personally, I'm surprised they haven't moved for some 3DLabs cards, since those, although somewhat slower than nVidia's or ATI's solutions, are much more flexible and provide more accurate rendering.

 

[Dave Baumann]

the Onyx Reality4 uses R300's or R360's and the Prism appears to be newer, using a"FireGL" chip of some kind - this is using half as many chips as Onyx does so it could hint at an R420 based chip; I couldn't find any datasheets that give th number of samples.

The Onyx system appreas to be pretty much tuned for high levels of FSAA over the chips - we don't know how easy that would be to achieve on 3dlabs products. there may be underlying business reasons as well if a vendor is more willing to open up the detailed specifications if Sun needed to produce the drivers.

 

[Megadrive1988]

it's no surprise that SGI selected ATI for Onyx4 UltimateVision graphics. the best engineering talent that ATI has are former SGI engineers. as well as Real3D engineers. SGI needed a huge boost in raw performance and 3DLabs could not have provided that with the P10, in all likelihood.