mlindsey@x102c.harris-atd.com (Lindsey MS 04396) (05/19/89)
Below are price comparisons between a similarly configured DEC 3100 and SUN SPARCstation 1. I found the price difference amazing. A monochrome configuration was $8,061 more for DEC even though the DEC didn't even have a floppy drive. For color, SUN was $10,561 cheaper (again the DEC machine didn't have a floppy drive). Even with a GX graphics accelerator the SUN machine was $6,061 cheaper than a DEC 3100 with no floppy and no graphics accelerator. DEC 3100 $12,900 SUN SPARCstation 1 $12,995 19" mono monitor 19" mono monitor 8 MB RAM 8 MB RAM *not avaiable* 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy 2 X 104 MB disks $4,800 2 X 104 MB disks 95 MB cart. tape drive $4,956 150 MB cart. tape drive $1,600 ------- ------- $22,656 $14,595 DEC 3100 $17,900 SUN SPARCstation 1 $19,995** 19" color monitor 19" color monitor 8 MB RAM 8 MB RAM 2 X 104 MB disks $4,800 2 X 104 MB disks 95 MB cart. tape drive $4,956 150 MB cart. tape drive $1,600 ------- ------- $27,656 $21,595** ** note the SUN price includes a GX graphics accelerator. It may be purchased without the GX card and with a 16" Sony Trinitron monitor for $4,500 less (total price = $17,095). "The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad" S. Dali "If the shoe fits, buy it!" Imelda Marcos. Steve Lindsey |-) uunet!x102a!mlindsey (407) 727-5893 :-) mlindsey@x102a.harris-atd.com
grunwald@flute.cs.uiuc.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (05/24/89)
Your price comparison is somewhat valid, but skewed by the high price of DEC disks and tapes. If you substitute a CDC Wren-V disk for the 2x104 Mb drives, you get 638Mb formatted for $2500. If you buy the TK50 or TK70 tape drive, you have only yourself to blame. You can pick up a 2.3Gb drive for the same money. However, you do need at least one TK drive to install your software (just like you need at least one streamer for the Sun). You also have to factor in the faster MIPS processor & the hefty discounts DEC is handing out (50% is university consortium price). -- Dirk Grunwald Univ. of Illinois grunwald@flute.cs.uiuc.edu
news%crltrx.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (USENET News System) (05/25/89)
Yup. And the DECstation (PMAX) is alot faster than the SPARCstation 1, particularly for floating point. Personally, I don't use or want tape drives on all machines; and my personal opinion of the TK50 is hardly printable in public. We have 20 PMAXes in our lab, and we may have one of those tape drives, and in fact generally use the tapes off our file servers. So if you knock of the tape drive (which does increase our entry price for your first machine if you don't have any tape drives on any server somewhere; as I said, I'm not a fan of it...) more realistic comparisons are alot closer (given your numbers; I've not studied Sun's price lists...) I certainly don't buy a tape drive with each machine.... So I suspect we're on similar price / performance curves for integer applications, and well ahead of the Sparcstation for floating point applications. - Jim Gettys
evans@stsci.edu (Ian Evans) (05/26/89)
In article <2072@trantor.harris-atd.com>, mlindsey@x102c.harris-atd.com (Lindsey MS 04396) writes: > Below are price comparisons between a similarly configured DEC 3100 and > SUN SPARCstation 1. I found the price difference amazing. A monochrome > configuration was $8,061 more for DEC even though the DEC didn't even have > a floppy drive. For color, SUN was $10,561 cheaper (again the DEC machine > didn't have a floppy drive). Even with a GX graphics accelerator the SUN > machine was $6,061 cheaper than a DEC 3100 with no floppy and no graphics > accelerator. [Price comparisons deleted to save space] Your comparisons show that the DECstation is between 30% and 55% more expensive than the SPARCstation 1. However you don't mention the performance comparison. I have conducted some performance experiments using the real live applications that I run every day, and NOT just benchmarks like LINPACK and WHETSTONE. They show that the DECstation is between 30% and 100% faster than the SPARCstation, with a harmonic mean of about 50% faster (both for single and double precision computations). Thus the price performance appears to be about the same for both systems for the sorts of things that I do (mostly number crunching, and a relatively small amount of graphics). Your price comparison is meaningless without a performance comparison for the sorts of things you want the machine to do. Note that users who do different things will get different price/per- formance comparisons. For heavy number crunching, the DECstation seems to be better, while the SPARCstation appears to provide better graphics performance (except when using X, which is terribly slow in comparison!). Ian Evans internet: evans@scivax.stsci.edu Space Telescope Science Institute bitnet: evans@stsci 3700 San Martin Drive SPAN: scivax::evans Baltimore, MD 21218 Voice: 1-(301)-338-4756 USA