Didn't PA-RISC lead MIPS, and everyone else, on those? When the already-obsolete machine being discussed in the OP was finally marketed in mid-1996, its int/fp socres of either 8/10 or 9/11 depending on the clock speed were not great compared to the available PA8000 workstations that scored 12 on SPECint95 and 17 on SPECfp95. People bought SGIs because there was some critical app they needed that was only available on IRIX, and they tolerated the bad CPU performance because they didn't have a choice.