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All,
Perhaps a topic with partial overlap with ccp4. After searching the
ccp4bb for 'stereo' and 'graphics' I found lots of (valuable)
information about video screens. My question is about graphics cards.
We are going to update our computer facility for crystallography use.
Sometime back (was it 2 years?) it appeared that a lot of
crystallographers liked the Nvidia Quadro graphics cards - I heard from
several people that they support stereo work well. Also, Gunnar
Olovsson summarized in December last year that the Quadro graphics
cards work well. But... I am surprised to see that these graphics cards
are not all that common anymore (I am saying that I did an internet
search to see who sells them and had to spend much more effort to find
them than I expected). It was easy to find the FX3450 for sale
(high-end, stereo capable, about US$1000) and the FX4500 (Ultra
High-end, about US$1800 (ouch!)), but not the more reasonable mid-range
cards (FX1400/1500).
The above occurs, of course, because "mid-range" isn't mid-range
anymore but closer to out-dated, while the high-end cards are still
'usable'. Sticking with Nvidia, for the argument, it appears that right
now the GeForce series of graphics is much more popular (for 'gaming'
and also less expensive).
Do these work well (enough) for crystallography, by anyone's experience?
Then on to the next thought (showing that perhaps I am old^H^H^H, er,
well you know...) is that today you can buy computers that are
especially configured for 3D gaming (they come ready-to-go with
graphics). Are these of any value in crystallographic model building
etc? It seems (more) ecomical to buy a computer for (say) $1000 that is
complete and attach a good CRT (as discussed a while back on this same
channel) rather than take an old (really! Five years or so! :-)
computer and buy a $1000 graphics card.
Does anyone have experience with the ready-to-go systems? I'd prefer to
run a flavor of Linux (probably Fedora Core) and would we need graphics
that are supported with drivers for Linux. I'd prefer not to reinvent
the wheel and will summarize if anyone else has experience with
"graphics upgrades".
Thanks,
Mark
Mark van der Woerd, PhD
Research Scientist
Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
Phone (970) 491-0469
