VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed May 29 2013 - 13:36:10 CDT

Hi,
  Your Quadrio NVS 290 doesn't have much video memory, so I would
recommend that you either disable antialiasing completely, or reduce
the max samples per pixel down to 2 or 3. The correct environment
variable to set is:
  VMDMAXAASAMPLES

You would get MUCH better rendering performance if you replaced that
NVS 290 with something more beefy like a GeForce 680.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 11:29:58AM -0700, Jack Bulat wrote:
> Hi John,
> Recently, I've upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 from 10.04 and now have upgraded
> NVIDIA drivers (3xx). I noticed that the VMD version 1.9.1 was running
> very slowly, and narrowed it down to the anti-aliasing problem that's been
> discussed (since MSAA(16) was displayed upon startup). After successfully
> installing 32-bit VMD1.9.2a26 just yesterday, I note an improvement; but
> performance is still sluggish enough to be noticeable. Here's what is
> displayed upon startup:
> Info) VMD for LINUX, version 1.9.2a26 (May 9, 2013)
> 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, 16 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 6240MB (78%)
> Info) Creating CUDA device pool and initializing hardware...
> Info) Detected 2 available CUDA accelerators:
> Info) [0] Tesla C1060 30 SM_1.3 @ 1.30 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, OIO, ZCP
> Info) [1] Quadro NVS 290 2 SM_1.1 @ 0.92 GHz, 255MB RAM, KTO, OIO,
> ZCP
> Warning) Detected X11 'Composite' extension: if incorrect display occurs
> Warning) try disabling this X server option. Most OpenGL drivers
> Warning) disable stereoscopic display when 'Composite' is enabled.
> Info) OpenGL renderer: Quadro NVS 290/PCIe/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(4) MDE CVA MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVFG)
> Info) Full GLSL rendering mode is available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (8192x8192), 3-D (2048x2048x2048), Multitexture (4)
> Info) Dynamically loaded 2 plugins in directory:
> Info) /usr/local/lib/vmd1.9.2a26/plugins/LINUX/molfile
> As you can see, MSAA(4) is shown, which is in line with the correction
> mentioned earlier in this thread. That said, I figure I could drop MSAA to
> 2 and get an improvement? However, there's no longer an environmental
> variable MAXAASAMPLES that's in place by default, and me setting it within
> VMD has no effect. Could you let me know if the name of the variable has
> been changed? Or if there's something else I ought to do in order to
> improve performance?
> Thanks,
> Jack Bulat
> Grad Student, UC Berkeley
> On Apr 15, 2013, at 7:51 AM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> Bogdan,
> I'm happy we got this solved. To be honest, I was a little surprised
> that the new NVIDIA drivers changed the antialiasing behavior so
> radically,
> but I'm glad I've got the new code in place and it's working for you.
> Hopefully this particular kind of problem won't crop up again.
>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 12:51:10PM +0200, Bogdan Costescu wrote:
>
> Hi John!
>
> I have tested version 1.9.2 alpha 23 and everything works as it
> should
> with the 3xx series driver from NVidia. By default, with my setup,
> VMD
> chooses 4 samples-per-pixel, which is the same value it chose with
> the 2xx
> series. I could change that with the VMDMAXAASAMPLES environmental
> variable to 2, 8 or 16 and see how the start-up message and display
> speed
> changes. All is well now :)
>
> Thanks a lot for finding and implementing this solution!
> Bogdan
>
> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 4:43 PM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Bogdan,
> Sorry for the slow reply, I'm out of town at a conference and I
> haven't
> been email accessible for a few days. There was a bug in my code
> (somehow
> a half-finished change got into CVS rather than the right one)
> which
> I will fix when I return home. The next build should work
> correctly.
>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 01:19:09PM +0100, Bogdan Costescu wrote:
>
> Hi John!
>
> The 1.9.2a20 version seems to have cured the performance issue, but
> not with the default setting. I have to set VMDMAXAASAMPLES to 4 to
> get about to about the same speed as the 2xx drivers.
>
> The VMD startup text doesn't change, still reporting:
>
> Info) [0] GeForce 9400 GT 4 SM_1.1 @ 1.38 GHz, 511MB RAM, KTO,
>
> OIO, ZCP
>
> Info) OpenGL renderer: GeForce 9400 GT/PCIe/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(16) MDE CVA MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVFG)
> Info) Full GLSL rendering mode is available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (8192x8192), 3-D (2048x2048x2048),
> Multitexture
>
> (4)
>
> i.e. the MSAA(16) is still present. When I set VMDMAXAASAMPLES, I
> see
> printed 5 times:
>
> Info) User-requested OpenGL AA sample depth: 4
>
> but all that follows is again the same (including MSAA(16)). I don't
> know if this is only cosmetic...
>
> But... the above results hold for driver 310.32; if using 313.09, I
> get the slow speed independent of the VMDMAXAASAMPLES setting - but
> this being a beta version might not mean much.
>
> Let me know if you'd like me to test some more.
>
> Cheers,
> Bogdan
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:25 PM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Bogdan,
> I posted a new test build of VMD, give it a try and let me know
> if it cures the performance issue you'd observed previously.
>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> --
> NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
>
> --
> NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/ 

-- 
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/