PyMOL Users: For those of you who like to keep up with the numbers, I just ran some new PyMOL CPU benchmarks on dual-processor unix workstations based on the Intel/Xeon, the Apple/G5, and our brand new AMD/Opteron. These aren't top models, but rather affordable systems with performance within 20-25% of top models.
The point here was to see on which workstation you will wait less when ray-tracing or calculating geometries like surfaces, given the latest PyMOL optimizations. Graphics performance wasn't compared since that depends mainly on the video card. http://delsci.com/bench The take home lesson: As far as PyMOL is concerned, you can't go wrong with any of the three -- they're all within 20% of one another, with the G5 and Opteron being almost identical Ghz for Ghz, and with both of them getting 40-60% more work done per Ghz than the Pentium 4 Xeon. It is striking however that the G5 and the Opteron are so similar in performance given that typical dual Opteron systems have a base price $1,300 higher than a Mac dual G5. If only stereo 3D (in a window) was available on the Mac, then it would be the obvious 64-bit platform of choice for molecular visualization. Cheers, Warren -- Warren L. DeLano, Ph.D. Principal Scientist . DeLano Scientific LLC . 400 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 213 . South San Francisco, CA 94080 . Biz:(650)-872-0942 Tech:(650)-872-0834 . Fax:(650)-872-0273 Cell:(650)-346-1154 . mailto:war...@delsci.com
