It is a shame,
I have two SGI O2's, one is the slowest R5000 based model,
the other is a very nice R12000/270Mhz. I bought both over 3 years ago
before things got so bad. Even the incredibly slow O2 is one of the most
impressive computers I've ever seen.
Yes, SGI's gear - even though "obsolete" - often will beat benchmarks of
the
latest nvidia and ati graphic boards (w/high resolution, and high levels of
anti-aliasing turned on).
What is really mind blowing is the load you can put on something like an
SGI O2 w/180Mhz R5000PC (only 32k cache, so it's significantly slower than
the R5000SC). I can put enough of a load on the system to noticably slow it
down, but it's still silky smooth! It feels even smoother than Solaris, and
Linux and Mac OS X are dogs by compariso.
Zane