EZSGIPR Following their Jan 25 product announcement, SGI announced price reductions for their existing Indigo workstations. Prices on the older Indigo R3000 systems dropped by approximately $2,500 across the board. Price reductions on the R4000 Indigos vary - with reductions of $500 on the least expensive systems and reductions of as much as $4,500 for the more expensive versions configured with 3D graphics hardware. An Indigo R3000 Entry with 16MB RAM and 432MB disk dropped $2,500 from $10,500 to $7995. An equivalently configured R4000-based Indigo dropped from $15,000 to $14,500, a difference of only $500. For higher-end graphics an R3000 Indigo XS/24Z went from $21,500 to $19,000, again a savings of $2,500. An R4000 Indigo XS/24Z saves $4,500, going from $26,500 to $22,000. Compare that $22,000 with $23,000 for an R4000 Indigo XZ which provides equivalent functionality and twice the perfomance of the XS/24Z. With the introduction of the XZ graphics board the XS/24Z is no longer a very attractive option even with the price drop. Memory and disk prices for the Indigo remain unchanged. Prices on the more expandible Crimson machines were also not changed. Unless customers truly need the Crimson's expansion capabilities the introduction of the Indigo2 Extreme makes the Crimson line much less attractive. Note that both lines are based on the same R4000 processor and deliver identical performance for both system and graphics measurements where configured with identical graphics options. However, an Indigo2 Extreme, at $35,000, delivers identical system performance and better graphics performance (in some case by as much as 2x) than the $57,900 Crimson Elan. The Indigo2 offers a new 64-bit system bus architecture. along with two built-in Fast SCSI-II channels and support for both EISA bus and GIO bus expandibility. Crimson supports 2 SCSI channels along with 4 VME expandibility slots. Let's take a look at how the systems and repricing stack up against HP. Comparing the newly repriced R3000-based Indigos with HP's model 715/33 HP offers more performance across the board for integer floating point, X Windows and graphics performance for $700 less in list price for comparable configurations. In the mid-range, HP's 715/50 offers better graphics and floating point for a few hundred dollars less than SGI's new R4000-based Indigo XZ. SGI's best competitive story today comes from the newest product, the Indigo2 Extreme, which offers very good 3D solids performance. A good strategy to compete here is to box the Indigo2 Extreme between the 715/50 CRX-48Z which comes in at a lower price for comparable CPU performance, better X Windows performance and performance within striking range in the graphics area, and the 735 CRX-48Z which has a commanding lead in all areas. ------------------------------------------------------------- Entry Systems 16MB RAM, 1/2GB disk, 16" monitor ------------------------------------------------------------- HP SGI 715/33 Indigo color Entry 1024x768 1024x768 15" 16" --------- --------- SPECint92 24 22 SPECfp92 45 24 X11perf 7633 5168 2D vec/sec 600 450 3D vec/sec 610 230 current $ 7,290 7,995 old $ 10,500 ------------------------------------------------------------- Mid-range 32MB RAM, 1GB disk, 19" monitor ------------------------------------------------------------- HP SGI SGI 715/50 R4K Indigo R4K Indigo CRX-24Z XZ XS/24Z 1280x1024 1280x1024 1280x1024 19" 19" 19" --------- --------- ---------- SPECint92 37 57 57 SPECfp92 72 61 61 X11perf 10646 7633 7633 2D vec/sec 1150 540 270 3D vec/sec 680 540 270 3D tri/sec 140 160 80 GPC CYL 35.5 29.8 33.2 current $ 26,140 26,500 25,500 old $ n/a 30,000 ------------------------------------------------------------- Performance 3D 64MB RAM, 1GB disk, 19" monitor ------------------------------------------------------------- HP HP SGI SGI 735 735 Crimson Indigo2 CRX-24Z CRX-48Z Elan Extreme 1280x1024 1280x1024 1280x1024 1280x1024 19" 19" 19" 19" --------- --------- --------- --------- SPECint92 80 80 57 57 SPECfp92 151 151 61 61 X11perf 18786 19122 6384 ? 2D vec/sec 680 2000 1000 1400* 3D vec/sec 680 1900 1000 1400* 3D tri/sec 175 600 270 540* LSQ 95 160 68 150 GPC CYL 59.9 78.7 31.9 33.5 $ 51,940 56,940 61,900 35,000 * estimate