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I just recently did this in an effort to replace my outdated SGI systems (via lots of help from this group). I bought the FX1400 card and am very happy with it. Everything runs well in stereo, it looks great and is very fast, and my emitter plugged right in (as opposed to these other gaming nvidia cards which do stereo in different ways). I bought the 1400 on sale for $350, which was a great price for me. The 1300 is out there now, and is a little cheaper, but I'm not sure which way is best (since I don't have a 1300 card). I bought a high end gaming computer, loaded with hard drive space and memory (4 gig memory). The computer costs around 900.00 u.s. (that's it). Threw in the above card and it's working great. I'm sad to say that the one program I really wanted is not working, but there are plenty of alternatives which others on this group use (coot, O, etc...), and the advantage I have being able to run other new software made the transition worth it. I am running fedora core 5 by the way. We did a similar comparison where we took an Intel-Mac and used the $2000 card (whichever that is, the only one that works in the intel-mac). I see no noticable difference in speed or stereo quality between the two (meaning the advantage you get with the $2000 card is not really noticable in the applications I am comparing it with). We have other reasons why we may go with the mac version (using them in public computer labs, etc...). Personally, I prefer the cheaper linux version, but am equally satisfied with the much more expensive intel-mac version. I have coot, O, and pymol as my stereo guinnea pigs (just to see). Oh yes, I have my old dial boxes working on the linux computer (in O), which is also a nice reason to go that route (though I guess they now are working on the mac). Good luck Dave >>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/27/06 9:04 PM >>> *** For details on how to be removed from this list visit the *** *** CCP4 home page http://www.ccp4.ac.uk *** 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
