[Chimera-users] Computer requirements

[Greg Couch]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, Sandra Eriksson wrote:

> Hi!
> I'm planning to buy a computer, and am checking on the requirements of
> my favourite programs. But, searching the Chimera home page, I found
> little information on the hardware neccessary to make the program run
> really smoothly. If you have suggestions for RAM, processor and
> graphics etc, I would be very grateful.
> Best,
> /Sandra

Hi Sandra,

The answer to your question depends on how big the data is and what type 
of data you want to visualize.  You can get idea of what you need by 
examining the chimera benchmarks results at 
<http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/benchmarks.html>.  And when you get your 
new computer, please submit your benchmark results, so they stay somehwat 
current.

Some general advice:  (1) stay away from integrated/motherboard graphics 
and business graphics cards (eg., Quadro NVS), so get a gaming or 
workstation graphics card; (2) stick and ball&stick depictions are CPU 
limited, so get a fast CPU, (3) wire depiction is faster on workstation 
graphics cards; (4) more memory never hurts; (5) graphics drivers are 
still faster on Windows XP than Vista on the same hardware; (6) chimera 
doesn't care if you run Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux :-).

 	Hope that helps,

 	Greg Couch
 	UCSF Computer Graphics Lab