[Chimera-users] Quadro versus GTX graphic cards

[Sabuj Pattanayek]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net> wrote:
> The quadro cards have had many more graphics driver bugs than the much more widely used gtx cards.  For example, the current quadro driver on Windows has a power management setting default value (save energy) that causes 30 second chimera freezes when picking atoms in large molecules.  Also the quadro cards are usually slower at rendering even when they work.
>
> The only reason to use a quadro card is if it is needed for using stereo glasses.  I don't know if any stereo setups can work with a gtx card.  That is more likely to work on Windows.

Yes it'll work in windows, but in Linux we tried with a gtx 680 to get
stereo to work with the LCD's that have the built-in emitters but the
driver won't enable stereo. There may be soft-quadro hacks in linux
that'll make your gtx look like a quadro (IIRC there are these things
in windows land), which may trick the linux driver into giving you
stereo.

We haven't had any issues in Linux with more modern quadros, i.e.
those made within the past 4-5 years, e.g. the 3700's (2008 release
date) still work well with a variety of applications. The majority of
our users work with small molecules and most of them have the 2D
geared passively cooled quadro NVS 295's in their dell workstations
that are more than 3yrs old and they continue to work well and be
supported by the latest and greatest nvidia drivers.