Main Page   Namespace List   Class Hierarchy   Alphabetical List   Compound List   File List   Namespace Members   Compound Members   File Members   Related Pages  

VMD graphics acceleration notes

VMD has been tested with and benefits from hardware 3D acceleration on many OpenGL-capable graphics accelerators. Note that some of these boards only provide hardware acceleration when they are running in particular display modes. The list below are video boards and configurations that have been recently tested by us or are thought to work well with VMD.

Note that the "Stereo" column indicates that a board support full quad-buffered frame-sequential stereo, and that it works correctly with the standard OpenGL interfaces. There are several video boards which provide a form of stereo support, but not through the normal OpenGL interfaces. Unless the board works with the quad-buffered OpenGL stereo interfaces, we have marked it as a "no" in the stereo column. It is still possible to use the "side-by-side" and "scanline-interleaved" stereo modes in VMD even on cards labeled with "no in the stereo column.

VMD supports OpenGL multisample antialiasing in high-end graphics boards. Presently this feature is only found in the Unix versions of VMD, but eventually it will make its way into the Windows and Mac versions of VMD as well. The workstation graphics table below notes whether or not we have tested the antialiasing feature in VMD with each listed hardware configuration.

Workstation graphics accelerators

Video Board / Vendor OS Stereo Antialiasing Video Mode/Settings Notes

Compaq/HP Powerstorm 300 Tru64 4.0F Yes No

HP Visualize FX10 HP-UX 11.0 Yes No

HP SV6 Cluster HP-UX 11.0 Yes Yes VMD cannot enable or disable antialiasing, it is set system-wide

IBM POWER GXT300P AIX 4.3.x No No

IBM POWER GXT6000P AIX 4.3.x Unknown Unknown

SGI Indigo2 MaximumImpact IRIX 6.5.x Yes No Must be in the quad-buffered stereo mode in order to use VMD in stereo.

SGI InfiniteReality2 IRIX 6.5.x Yes Yes Must be in the quad-buffered stereo mode in order to use VMD in stereo. Not all video resolutions can support multisample antialiasing, usually only the lower resolutions leave enough video memory.

SGI Octane2 IRIX 6.5.x Yes Yes Must be in the quad-buffered stereo mode in order to use VMD in stereo. Note that there are several graphics board variations available, some boards do not support all features, particularly when running with two display channels. Not all video resolutions can support multisample antialiasing, usually only the lower resolutions leave enough video memory.

Sun Elite3D Solaris 8 Yes No Must be in the quad-buffered stereo mode in order to use VMD in stereo.

Sun Expert3D / Expert3D-lite Solaris 8 Yes Yes Have not tested antialiasing on this hardware

Sun XVR-500 Solaris 8 Yes Yes Have not tested antialiasing on this hardware

Sun XVR-1000 Solaris 8 Yes Yes Use "fbconfig -multisample enable dynamic" for best antialiasing with VMD

Sun XVR-1200 Solaris 8 Yes Yes

Sun XVR-4000 Solaris 8 Yes Yes Use "fbconfig -multisample available -samples max -jitter auto" for best antialiasing with VMD

PC graphics accelerators

Video Board / Vendor OS Stereo Video Mode/Settings Notes

3DFX Voodoo3 Win98 No Must be in 16-bit color mode and using latest drivers in order for any OpenGL acceleration to work. The Win98 1.03.00 drivers worked beautifully for us, no problems.

3DFX Voodoo3 NT No Must be in 16-bit color mode and using latest drivers in order for any OpenGL acceleration to work.

3DLabs GVX1 NT/Win2K Reported to work very well.

3DLabs Oxygen VX-1600 NT/Win2K No Reported to work very well, runs SGI 1600SW flat-panel.

3DLabs Permedia NT 1024x768

ATI Rage Mobility 128 AGP 4X Windows 2000 No Works with 1600x1200 resolution

ATI Rage Pro Turbo NT No Must be in Truecolor mode for hardware acceleration

ATI Rage Fury (Rage 128 chip) NT No Must be in 16-bit color or Truecolor mode for hardware acceleration In the "ATI OpenGL" tab, select "Performance" in the "optimization preference" radio buttons.

Diamond FireGL 1000 8MB AGP NT Yes Get latest driver, set for 1024x768, use "3D stereo support" configuration file under display properties. (with older drivers, use 800x600, 16-bit color, and "2nd Z-buffer" option)

Diamond FireGL 4000 NT/Win2K Yes Reported to work very well

Diamond FireGL 1 NT/Win2K Yes

Diamond FireGL 2 NT/Win2K Yes

Diamond FireGL 4 NT/Win2K Yes

Diamond Viper 770 (NVidia TNT2 Ultra) NT No Both Truecolor and 16-bit color mode work fine.

Evans and Sutherland AccelStar-II NT Yes 1024x768, 16-bit color, possibly several other modes.

HP Visualize FX6 NT/Win2K Yes Get the latest drivers.

HP Visualize FX10 NT/Win2K Yes

Intergraph "Z" NT Yes

Matrox G400 NT No 32-bit color 1024x768 works fine

NVidia TNT2 Ultra NT, Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work.

NVidia GeForce256 NT, Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work.

NVidia GeForce256-DDR NT, Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work.

NVidia GeForce 2 GTS NT, Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work.

NVidia GeForce 3 Win2K, Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work. Linux drivers still aren't as reliable or fast as the Windows drivers, but still good.

NVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work. Linux drivers still aren't as reliable or fast as the Windows drivers, but still good.

NVidia Quadro NT, Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work great.

NVidia Quadro2 NT, Linux No All 32-bit and 16-bit color modes work great.

SGI Visual Workstation 320 NT Yes Any of the modes should work fine.

Id:
pg_accelerators.dox,v 1.3 2008/03/04 20:15:49 johns Exp


Generated on Fri Oct 11 02:46:40 2024 for VMD (current) by doxygen1.2.14 written by Dimitri van Heesch, © 1997-2002