[chimera-dev] hardware requirements for Chimer software

[Greg Couch]

On 11/14/2011 11:29 AM, Whitney_Roessler at Dell.com wrote:
>
> Chimera Team,
>
> One of my customers at IUPUI will be utilizing the Chimera software 
> and is looking to purchase a 3-D capable system.  I was wondering if 
> you could provide to me the minimum or recommended hardware 
> requirements to run this software.
>
> Thanks,
>
> *Whitney Roessler*-*Account Manager*
>
> *Major Public Accounts ESL *
>
> *PH:*512-513-9351/ *Toll Free* 877-671-3355,*ext* 5139351
>
> *PO Fax:*512-283-7082
> *Email:* whitney_roessler at dell.com <mailto:whitney_roessler at dell.com>
>
>

The answer to your question depends on how much data the customer wishes 
to view at one time, whether or not they wish to view their data in 
stereo, and whether or not they wish to make large animations.  Look at 
the Chimera Benchmarks web page, 
http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/trac/chimera/wiki/benchmarks, for some idea of 
the relative capabilities of various systems.  You'll notice that there 
are very few benchmark results for current systems, so perhaps you could 
run the benchmarks on various Dell configurations and submit the 
results, that way other people could get an idea of what to buy.

Personally, I prefer a workstation with a high end 3D graphics card, but 
a gaming system might be more than adequate.  Stay away from older Intel 
motherboard graphics, 2D graphics cards, and entry level 3D graphics 
cards.   And only get a laptop where the graphics driver can be updated 
with the GPU vendor's driver (Dell and all other laptop vendors are very 
bad at updating the graphics drivers on their support sites and lots of 
Chimera bugs have been solved by updating the graphics driver).

     Hope this helps and feel free to ask more questions,

     Greg
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