VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2014 - 11:31:36 CDT

Hi Pawel,
  It will indeed work on a GeForce card. I have a GT 560M on my
laptop at home and it works well for small molecules.
The major issue in most cases is how much GPU memory you have, I don't
know what a GT540M has, but that's most likely the major limitation to
be concerned with.
Feel free to give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

Cheers,
  John Stone

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 09:29:15AM +0100, Pawel Kedzierski wrote:
> Dear John,
> Although interactive raytracing looks like a killer feature and may be
> tempting to many to try out, Nvidia page talks that OptiX is for Quadro
> and Tesla products; is it true or is there some else minimal GPU
> architecture requirement?
> I have a modest GT540M (GF108) in my laptop and I wonder if there is any
> sense to ever start the fuss with bleeding edge drivers.
> Thanks,
> Pawel
>
> W dniu 30.10.2014 o 17:33, John Stone pisze:
> >Hi,
> > Since VMD 1.9.2 beta 1 was released, I have been working
> >hard on making the first version of a new interactive GPU ray
> >tracing feature available before VMD 1.9.2 ships. I have had
> >a small group of people testing the code up until now, but I
> >think it's time to get feedback from a broader range of users,
> >particularly since several hundred people have already been
> >downloading and testing the previous VMD beta version that
> >includes the batch-only version of the GPU ray tracer.
> >
> >The new VMD build _REQUIRES_ the latest NVIDIA driver versions.
> >You MUST be running NVIDIA driver version 344.xx or later otherwise
> >you will not be able to use new GPU ray tracer.
> >Best results will be obtained on GPUs that contain several gigabytes
> >of GPU memory. GPUs with 4GB of memory are in the sweet spot where
> >you can render even fairly large scenes without running out of memory.
> >
> >The reward for going through the trouble to update to the latest
> >driver version is that this new version of VMD can do real-time
> >interactive ray tracing for large molecular scenes, at rates of
> >20 to 60 frames per second, even when sophisticated rendering
> >effects such as ambient occlusion light or depth of field are
> >enabled, by virtue of the use of a progressive rendering approach
> >that refines the image when the view orientation is not changing.
> >
> >The new interactive GPU ray tracer is currently listed in the VMD
> >File|Render menu as "TachyonL-OptiX (live real-time GPU display)".
> >
> >The interactive ray tracer will open a new graphics display window,
> >which uses similar control keys to the main VMD graphics display,
> >and it also supports the use of the SpaceNavigator input devices.
> >
> >I have posted a 64-bit Linux VMD test build for RHEL 5.x systems,
> >and I'm writing initial documentation for it here:
> > http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/alpha/optix/
> >
> >The new VMD test version also supports depth-of-field rendering in
> >the standard CPU versions Tachyon, and POV-Ray.
> >
> >I would appreciate feedback users have when they begin testing
> >the new features. I will be updating the documentation as
> >questions, problems, and solutions arise.
> >
> >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/