[Suns-at-Home] Raw Power

[Kevin Fitzgerrell]

On 7/16/07, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon@widomaker.com> wrote:

> > >> The E3500 has much more power and the Ultra 1 is much quieter than the
> > >> Ultra 5 but somehow it feels like my "home machine".
> >
> > > It is very PC-like, esp in hardware design (IDE, "VGA" monitor connector,
> > > etc.), and likely faster than the Ultra 1...
> >
> > I'd say it really depends on your usage.  The Ultra1/2 tend to have better
> > I/O than the 5/10.  Yes, the CPU is very likely faster in the 5, but that
> > IDE bus is /garbage/.  IIRC, its only ATA33.  The onboard video is also
> > lackluster.
>
> On that note, are there *ANY* newer SPARC based Sun systems that have decent
> PCI and IDE/SATA busses, and that aren't priced out of the "equivalent power"
> market?
>
> Or is that pretty much limited to their AMD based machines?
>
Not really answering your question (no IDE/SATA), but I'm really
pleased with the price and performance of Ultra 60s - I've got a dual
450mhz, dual Creator video box that makes a really nice personal
workstation - picked this up off EBay a year or so ago for $60 and
added the 2nd CPU a bit later.  It's got a decent PCI bus with one
high speed slot, and reasonably fast scsi for the internal drives.
It's a long way from silent but not too bad.

Cheers,

Kevin