VMD-L Mailing List

From: Peter Freddolino (petefred_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 05 2007 - 12:41:59 CDT

As a side note to Axel's (excellent) advice, if you have a little more
budget there is something to be said for the G80 generation cards since
they can make use of CUDA (see
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/cuda/), which we expect to become
increasingly prominent both in VMD and elsewhere. You lose the price
benefit for going with an older generation chipset though.
Best,
Peter

Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Jul 2007, Ignacio Fernández Galván wrote:
>
> IFG> Hi all,
>
> hi ignacio,
>
> IFG> I'm considering upgrading my workstation, and I'd like to choose a
> IFG> video card that would work nicely with VMD under Linux. Particularly,
> IFG> I'd be interested in volume colouring of isosurfaces, GLSL rendering
> IFG> and, of course, overall performance. Considering the different card
> IFG> features and driver availability, does anyone have any advice on which
> IFG> cards to go for or to run away from? If possible, I'd like more or less
>
> you are asking for a lot and with linux right now, the only
> sensible option is to get an nVidia card. full GLSL support
> requires a fairly recent card (i've had good experiences with
> G70 generation cards, GeForce7800 GS and Quadro FX4500), and
> in my experience the (much more expensive) quadro cards tend
> to be a bit more reliable. however, bugs in the drivers/cards
> exposed by VMD tend to be showing up and vanish depending on
> the specific driver release, so a consumer model (=GeForce)
> can work just as well, if you put in a little extra for trying
> multiple driver versions. in terms of reliability and budget
> you should stay away from the 'extreme' models. generally a
> second tier chipset of the previous generation seems to provide
> a better price/performance ratio than a budget model of the
> latest generation and will not bother you with excessive heat
> or noise. ...and for linux you don't have to pay attention
> to support for directx v(n+1). ;-)
>
> as for other options:
> - ATI/AMD cards seem to work occasionally, but VMD triggers a lot
> of bugs in the drivers and ATI/AMDs support for linux is not
> very good.
> - Intel graphics are very basic and do not provide high performance
> for OpenGL (some call them 'graphics decelerators') and not GLSL
> (at least for the ones that i checked). intel has recently started
> to put more effort into supporting their graphics with linux, but
> i suspect it will take a while until it shows, and a budget nvidia
> card will beat those intel chips on any occasion anyways.
> - the rest is not worth thinking about at all.
>
> cheers,
> axel.
>
> IFG> normal cards and not professional/expensive/hard-to-find ones.
> IFG>
> IFG> Thanks in advance
> IFG> Ignacio
> IFG>
> IFG>
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