[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 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?
We picked up a Quadro for around $25 on Ebay and it does a great job for everything we've done -- stereo at 1280x1024, or regular resolution of 1600x1200. It's an "nVidia Corporation NV25GL [Quadro4 750 XGL]". You will want a Quadro to get the DIN port for stereo. Also they may force-disable stereo on non-Quadro cards in their drivers, but I'm unsure. > 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. No need for the $1000 card unless you're doing something incredibly demanding like trying to view a detailed density map or surface for the full protein at once. Thanks, Donnie
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