If you did extensive floating point or needed lots of fast graphics, or needed lots of RAM or I/O, the Sun workstation was more powerful than a PC running Linux

If you did extensive floating point or needed lots of fast graphics, or needed lots of RAM or I/O, the Sun workstation was more powerful than a PC running Linux, at least up until 1998. By 2000, it was probably less clear. As I recall, it was typical to pay 15 or 20K for the workstation plus display.