Comparisons between DECstations and SUN SPARC stations sought

[Arthur Stine]

>From article <8877 at brazos.Rice.edu>, by honavar at goat.cs.wisc.edu (Vasant Honavar):
> I am interested in comparison (performance, software, graphics, etc..)
> between DECstations (2100, 3100, 3200, 5000 etc.) and SUN SPARC stations
> (SPARC I and SPARC II). For a budget of $20k or less, which would you
> recommend? Thanks.

Check out some of the reviews in Unix Today, Digital Review, etc. The
latest Digital Review did a comparison of the 2100 and the SS1+ and the
results were sort of interesting in that the 2100 was marginally faster
(due to newer compilersm, no doubt). In general, the DEC Risc stuff is
faster than the SparcStations, but the IBM is faster than all of them
(even some of them put together). The Sun has more software available
right now, but that is changing for both the DEC and IBM platforms. I
guess it depends on exactly what you are looking to do with the
workstation. The new DECstation-5000 is really fast (somewhere close to 2x
the SS1+) and has alot faster graphics. DEC here is making good deals on
the DS5000, so you might check it out. IBM has started to ship the
RS/6000's, so that might be a possibility; you might want to check
delivery times though. They are all good workstations from what I've seen.

Art Stine
Sr Network Engineer
Clarkson U
ABStine at CLVMS.Clarkson.Edu