Hi David, * David A. Horita <dhor...@wfubmc.edu> [2007-06-14 11:52] wrote: > Hi, > While I've seen a number of examples of good graphics cards to use with > Pymol, I'd like some feedback on what an acceptable low-end is for a > Windows laptop computer. Specifically, is the Intel GMA950 completely > useless or just not very good. Likewise, does the X3100 help (this > seems to be weak on driver support)? > > My current system uses an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200, which is a few years > old and not a high-end gaming/workstation card, but lets me spin a > molecular cartoon or surface of a ~300 residue protein without any > problems (if the 950 or X3100 equal this level, I'll be satisfied). > Many of the current crop of <5 lb notebooks use integrated graphics for > price and battery life. If these units don't provide sufficient > graphics power for Pymol/VMD/Deepview, the useful market shrinks > substantially.
I use a Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad T43 with the ATI X300. I use Linux (Debian) only on this laptop and with the fglrx ATI driver it certainly gives acceptable performance. I can spin a 300-residue protein drawn in surface mode easily enough. It seems to be only a little slower than my desktop, which has a ATI 9500 Pro. I don't recall trying it on this laptop before I blew Windows off the disk, but I'd expect you'd get at least as good performance with Windows as Linux. The Thinkpads are nice small laptops. Cheers, Rob -- Robert L. Campbell, Ph.D. Senior Research Associate/Adjunct Assistant Professor Botterell Hall Rm 644 Department of Biochemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6 Canada Tel: 613-533-6821 Fax: 613-533-2497 <robert.campb...@queensu.ca> http://pldserver1.biochem.queensu.ca/~rlc
