Summary of response to SUN 4/280 vs SUN 4/330

[Boon-Ping Chew]

Many thanks to all who reply to my request about performance of a SUN
4/2xx against a SUN 4/3xx. The reason why I was looking at a SUN 4/280 and
a SUN 4/330 is the price. We were give a good discount on the 4/280 making
it attactive. We have not decided what to get yet, but it looks like the
4/330. The only plus going for the 4/280 is the strong possibility of
future upgrades to a 20 Mips CPU. But the way system prices are falling in
terms of price/performance, the picture will change constantly. Of course,
I "never" get enough of memory but 56 Meg max should be sufficient of
now.

  Boon
  ( standard disclaimers )

  Reply to my posting are listed below.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

X-Subject: Sun 4/330
X-From:    flynn at pixel.cps.msu.edu (Patrick J. Flynn)

We have a 4/330, 24MB of memory, 2 327MB disks, and a GXP 3D accelerator.
My rough impression is that it's about 60% faster than our 4/280 (32MB
memory, 2 892MB disks) on my current mix of compute-intensive and
I/O-intensive applications (image processing).

Definitely a nice box.  If you go with it and get the GXP option, *make
sure* you order SunPHIGS with it.  we're getting nothing from the
accelerator right now because we didn't realize that the GXP is really a
GP2 on 2 chips. Now we're waiting on PHIGS to arrive.

Full-Name: Russ Poffenberger
X-Subject: 4/280 vs 4/330

Certainly a 4/300 series is a much better value than the 4/200 series. We
have a 4/370 and I love it. It is FAST (read quick). I have an XY753 in it
connected to a CDC sabre 850 drive and I have NO problems. I read a post
from somebody that the 330 has different ROMS (same CPU as the 370) that
doesn't allow it to boot from an SMD controller, but I find this hard to
believe. Even so, you could always boot initially from the SCSI and then
let the SMD take over.

X-Subject: Re: How good/reliable are the new SUN 330 fileserver ?
X-From:    mkatz at sesame.stanford.edu (Morris Katz)

The 330 has higher CPU performance by about a factor of 1.5.  The 280 has
8 slots and the 330 only has about 6 (I don't have the literature in front
of me so I can't say for certain exactly how many slots the 330 has and
how many of them are the full height/full width slots of the type in the
280.)  Neither of these machines will handle the new IPI drives.  The last
time I checked, the 330 did not officially support the 6250bpi tape drive
although there is every reason to believe that it works just fine with
this machine.  Lastly, the 330 is a newer machine so it will probably have
a more attractive upgrade path in the future if you are worried about such
things.

X-Subject: Re: How good/reliable are the new SUN 330 fileserver ?
X-From:    ekrell at hector.att.com

The 4/330 supports SCSI disks only. You should be looking at the 4/370.
The closest to the configuration you want is the 4/370-S-32-P14 (32MB, 2
688MB SMD disks on an SMD-4 controller, 150MB 1/4" tape). List price is
$77,900.

A similar 4/280 configuration is the 4/280S-P11J (32MB, 892MB SMD disk on
an SMD-4 controller). List price is $81,600.

As you see, the 4/280 is more expensive and is slower (the SPARC on the
4/3xx runs at 25MHz versus 16.67MHz on the 4/280). That makes the raw CPU
speed of the 4/3xx 50% faster. I see no reason to buy the 4/280.

X-Subject: Re: SUN 330 vs. 4/280
X-From:    Keith F Pilotti <sol!pilotti%Comsystems.SAIC.COM at esosun.css.gov>

The Sparcstation 330 is a WONDERFUL machine.  Fastest Sun ever!  You can
get a "datacenter server" version in rackmount, or a larger deskside
server.  The 25MHZ Sparc processor is in all the 4/3xx systems and is the
way to go.  DO NOT GO FOR A 4/280!  It has a much slower clock speed and
has an older processor.

SPARC 330 5 slot pedestal
SPARC 370 12 slot pedestal
SPARC 390 16 slot rack

X-Subject: Re: How good/reliable are the new SUN 330 fileserver ?
X-From:    mr at ritd.co.uk

We have had a 4/330 for a few weeks. Its a damn good machine, but probably
not what you want. You should look at the 4/370 package: same CPU, but
bigger boxes that can take SMD drives. We just got one of these too, and
it flies along. I can't think of any good reason for using an essentially
obsolete 4/280 instead.

4/330 is SCSI disks only, upto ~1.3Gb. Comes with 8, 24 or 40Mbytes.

4/370 is SCSI or SMD, upto 16 drives (currently 688MBytes each).
Only comes in 32 or 56Mbyte flavours.

Obviously you could go out and buy third party disks, etc. but I can't
really comment on that as we don't.