VMD-L Mailing List

From: R. M. Fesinmeyer (rmf_at_u.washington.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 06 2001 - 22:57:14 CDT

John,

Thank you for your responses regarding VMD and multithreading. I will look
for the information on transforming molecule coordinates you mentioned as
well.

With respect to graphics issues (see below), my system uses a GeForce2MX
card with RedHat 7.1 (XFree86 upgraded to 4.0.3). I've installed the latest
nVidia drivers and my impression is that hardware acceleration is being
used. I don't see this behavior when running VMD on a Windows 2000 machine
with similar hardware. I have noticed that the Windows platform provides
better graphic performance, perhaps suggesting that hardware acceleration is
not in use under Linux. Any insights into this issue would be appreciated.

Robert

> > 3) I've noticed that after creating some user defined graphic (say: draw
> > sphere {0 0 0} radius 10), VMD goes to 100% cpu usage, even though
> > nothing is being done interactively. Removing the graphic
> > (Molecule-->Delete) brings VMD back to a normal "resting" cpu usage.
> > While this isn't a problem with a single sphere, something more complex
> > (like the Dial script) slows the system down significantly. Is this a
> > bug, or is there a reason for this?
>
> Interesting: What graphics card do you use? I don't experience that
> problem when running here on a Sun machine with an Elite3Dm6 graphics
> board. I don't recall that behavior on a GeForce3-equipped Linux
machine
> either. If you're running a software-only renderer however, or a board
> that lacks some OpenGL functionality, I could imagine this occuring.
> Tell me more about your system and we'll figure that out.