SGI: Hardware

The nekochan wiki says that

This doesn't make sense to me. The only SGI-delivered dual head Tezros were the dual-unit rackmount models with one V12 in each unit. The graphics card fits in the case no matter how tall the cpu heat sinks are because they are in totally different areas ... plus bri3d has an Infinite Performance Tezro clone with dual 1 ghz processors. If he did the same mod to the second unit he'd have a dual head 1 ghz Tezro. Processor height was not one of the problems he faced.

The other possibility would be the tower Tezro which has two xio slots. One slot is physically inappropriate for a V12 because the case gets in the way (testing required to see if it would actually work, case constraints be damned) but in the tower, the processors are on the other side of the midplane so the processor height would not be relevant.

How come the wiki thinks this ?

Dammit hamei, you really need to lay off the sauce!

Sorry Made a fresh batch this morning. Really easy. Tomatoes, onion, cilantro. Chop it all up together really really fine and bob's yer uncle. Tastes great, less filling !

There was actually a reason for that question, tho. Not that I'll ever have a dual 1 ghz setup but kind of looking into a dual head deskside with digital outputs. I read this and wondered how the processor height could affect the graphics cards when they are in an entirely different part of the case ?

Now that I'm pimping IR3, I'm developed a snobbery against V12, even in a Tezro.

If it weren't for the digital output problem, yeah. Oh yeah.

But alas, 3840 x 2400 in glorious digital is my goal, preferably for less than the yearly paint bill on the Golden Gate Bridge.

I think the wiki is referencing the rack mounted Tezro in general, and bri3d's O350/Tezro-clone in particular - I wouldn't be surprised to find the reference is drawn from bri3d's posts in the original 350/Vpro thread . When installed in a O350, the rear of the PCB on a Fuel VPro would protrude into the 1GHz O350 processor heatsink shroud. The issue is resolvable, bri3d removed the heatsink shroud and has run his system for some time without it.

O350s with 600, 700 and 800MHz processors have VPro clearance issues too. While there aren't any PCB clearance issues, the heatsink used on the Fuel version of the VPro has to be shortened to clear the O350 processor shroud , or the processor shroud in the O350 must be removed. Removing the processor shroud only provides sufficient VPro clearance in dual processor O350s, in quad processor O350s the heatsinks on the rear processors would be in the way even if the shroud was removed. There's been speculation that a second V12 could be run in the tower Tezro: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16721069&

The the location of the XIO slots on the tower Tezro's interface board is a little easier to visualize in this engineering diagram:

For a megadose of the engineering smarts that put the "G" in SGI, you can't touch InfiniteReality. But the V12 does have at least one non-performance advantage. Tucked inside the short rack the O350/V12 has a barely noticeable fan-noise footprint <SGI kindly put a metal door on both ends of their short rack >. An InfiniteReality system, especially a rack system , is anything but low profile when it comes to noise.

My poor Octane 2 V12 doesn't stand a chance against IR3. You can load an entire scene , with lighting , textures and etc without the machine pegging on you