VMD-L Mailing List

From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu)
Date: Thu May 28 2009 - 19:46:33 CDT

On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 19:32 -0500, John Stone wrote:
> Axel,
> Are the open source "radeon" ATI drivers being kept up to date, or are
> they a dead-end now? I looked at the list of supported chips on the front

they are supported for "legacy" hardware. if the chipset in question
is indeed an R300 then the open source driver is the way to go.

> page of the Wiki and all of the new chips are noticably absent from
> the list. These drivers might be adequate for normal X, but clearly
> they're falling far short on the OpenGL side of things, at least
> with sophisticated apps like VMD. The list of hardware supported by the

they are supposed to be catching up, and thus they are should be
much better than the 2006 version of the same ones, which seemed
to be used on the machine in question.

> ATI/AMD proprietary "fglrx" drivers seems much much more complete and
> up-to-date.

correct. it all boils down to the specific chipset.

cheers,
   axel.

>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 08:05:48PM -0400, Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
> > On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 15:13 -0500, John Stone wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > This looks like a video driver problem. What video chipset or
> > > GPU do you have in this machine? It looks like you've got Mesa
> >
> > john, "S",
> >
> > this is an ATI radeon R300 chipset (we have one card of that type
> > here in the CMM, IIRC). there is a wiki describing ATI card support
> > under linux at:
> > http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Open_source_drivers
> > since AMD is now making documentation available, the open source
> > drivers should have improved significantly since 2006...
> >
> > there also should be a "legacy" version of the proprietary
> > fglrx driver for this chipset from AMD at:
> > http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
> >
> > > as your video driver, which means you're not getting any hardware
> > > acceleration, and things like GLSL probably won't work correctly.
> > > Can you get an updated driver for your machine?
> >
> > since the fglrx drivers have always been a bit ticklish
> > it may still be required to disable advanced OpenGL via
> > setting VMDSIMPLEGRAPHICS to 1.
> >
> > cheers,
> > axel.
> >
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > John Stone
> > > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> > >
> > > On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 03:45:10PM -0400, snoze pa wrote:
> > > > Hi There,
> > > > I am using vmd in Linux fedora 10 but it crashes with following
> > > > messages! Any Help?
> > > > Thank you.
> > > > S
> > > >
> > > > Info) VMD for LINUXAMD64, version 1.8.7beta3 (May 18, 2009)
> > > > Info) http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> > > > Info) Email questions and bug reports to vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> > > > Info) Please include this reference in published work using VMD:
> > > > Info) Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., `VMD - Visual
> > > > Info) Molecular Dynamics', J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.
> > > > Info) -------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > Info) Multithreading available, 2 CPUs detected.
> > > > Info) Free system memory: 1635MB (81%)
> > > > Info) No CUDA accelerator devices available.
> > > > Info) OpenGL renderer: Mesa DRI R300 20060815 TCL
> > > > Info) Features: STENCIL MDE CVA MTX PP
> > > > Info) GLSL rendering mode is NOT available.
> > > > Info) Textures: 2-D (4096x4096), 3-D (256x256x256), Multitexture (8)
> > > > Segmentation fault
> > >
> >
> > --
> > =======================================================================
> > Axel Kohlmeyer akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
> > Center for Molecular Modeling -- University of Pennsylvania
> > Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
> > tel: 1-215-898-1582, fax: 1-215-573-6233, office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
> > =======================================================================
> > If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot.
> 

-- 
=======================================================================
Axel Kohlmeyer   akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu   http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
   Center for Molecular Modeling   --   University of Pennsylvania
Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
tel: 1-215-898-1582,  fax: 1-215-573-6233,  office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
=======================================================================
If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot.