Many thanks to Tom and Greg for their information on the Nvidia NVS cards. I think I have a strong case to make to my employer to upgrade some machines - at least those of postdocs who need to make pictures for papers! Cheers David -----Original Message----- From: Greg Couch [mailto:gregc@cgl.ucsf.edu] Sent: 05 September 2007 21:23 To: Tom Goddard Cc: Waterman, DG (David); chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] benchmark scores On Wed, 5 Sep 2007, Tom Goddard wrote:
I've seen two machines (laptops) with Nvidia NVS graphics cards that had relatively low Chimera graphics rendering scores. Greg Couch, a Chimera developer says the NVS cards are intended for 2 dimensional graphics. The graphics was much faster on one of the machines after changing some driver settings. I think one change was to turn "triple
buffering" off but I'm not sure that is what improved the speed. Perhaps Greg remembers what changes on John Irwin's machine improved the speed.
Tom
The change was to reset the driver settings to their defaults. As for any graphics card with limited memory, do not turn on memory consuming options unless you need them. So for a Quadro NVS, turn off antialiasing, turn off triple buffering, turn on unified back/depth buffer, turn off stereo, and turn off overlay. Turning off antialiasing will have the biggest effect on performance -- you can turn it off on the chimera command line with the --nomultisample option instead of modifying the driver settings. - Greg <DIV><FONT size="1" color="gray">This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential, copyright and or privileged material, and are for the use of the intended addressee only. If you are not the intended addressee or an authorised recipient of the addressee please notify us of receipt by returning the e-mail and do not use, copy, retain, distribute or disclose the information in or attached to the e-mail. Any opinions expressed within this e-mail are those of the individual and not necessarily of Diamond Light Source Ltd. Diamond Light Source Ltd. cannot guarantee that this e-mail or any attachments are free from viruses and we cannot accept liability for any damage which you may sustain as a result of software viruses which may be transmitted in or with the message. Diamond Light Source Limited (company no. 4375679). Registered in England and Wales with its registered office at Diamond House, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0DE, United Kingdom </FONT></DIV>