Computer Hardware for Chimera

Below are links to help choose computer hardware that will run UCSF Chimera well. Emphasis is on graphics cards, graphics driver problems, and stereo display systems.

This information quickly becomes out-of-date so check the dates on the pages.

Graphics Cards

Benchmark results for rendering speed using Chimera with various graphics cards.

​Driver bugs observed running Chimera.

Stereo 3D Displays and Glasses

Chimera's sequential stereo camera mode provides the best fidelity, with full color and spatial resolution. But, to use it, you need to carefully pick your graphics card and display. Often, the displays are coupled with active 3D glasses, i.e., glasses were the left and right eyes alternately turn off and on synchronously with the display, like many 3D TVs, or displays that work with NVIDIA's ​3D Vision.

Since Chimera's 3D content is inside a window, to get 3D stereo in a window, you have historically needed a workstation graphics card with the graphics driver configured for stereo (e.g., an AMD ​FirePro, or a NVidia ​Quadro graphics cards for Windows or Linux, or a NVidia Quadro for Mac OS X).

While the workstation graphics solutions still work, a relatively inexpensive solution that supports 3D stereo in a window is now available with Microsoft ​Windows 8, an AMD ​Radeon graphics card, and a 3D TV!

In 2014, Apple dropped 3D stereo support in its products. But it used to work with Mac Pros with NVIDIA Quadro graphics, and some systems with AMD Radeon graphics. See the Stereoscopic line of the Apple's ​OpenGL Capabilities Tables to see which older products had 3D stereo support and thus might work with Chimera.

Older links

Stereo 3-d televisions work with Chimera on Mac laptops.

Stereo test programs

​Nvidia 3D Vision setup details with stereo-capable LCD display.

​Stereo display options.

​Row-interleaved versus sequential stereo.

​Stereo modes supported by Chimera.

​NVidia 3D Vision glasses.

Stereo Projectors

​Projector issues and ​content production by Matt Dougherty.

Memory

​Memory needed for large data display. We suggest using a 64-bit version of Chimera (Linux and Mac available, Windows in Fall 2010) if your machine has more than 4 Gbytes of memory.

Input Devices

​Miscellaneous input devices reviewed: Wii, Space Navigator, web-cam head-tracking, force-feedback.