From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 12 2010 - 09:02:19 CST

Hi,
  Can you try setting this environment variable on your system and
re-running VMD?: Set VMDCUDAVERBOSE to 1
You can set the environment variable by entering the properties window
for your computer, click the advanced tab and find the environment
variables settings, then create this as a new environment variable.
Once added, VMD should print much more diagnostic information during
initialization of the CUDA device. I have never encountered the problem
you're seeing. The error you're getting is likely occuring during the
startup phase where VMD allocates the available GPU memory and
clears it to zeros before continuing. The error you're getting
appears to be occuring later on when VMD is in the process of freeing
the memory, which doesn't make much sense to me. I'm wondering if this
is a weird new behavior of Aero. In any case, if you can set that environment
variable and email me what output you get when you run VMD after having
set that variable, that would be helpful to me in solving the problem.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 03:22:40PM +0100, Ajasja Ljubeti?? wrote:
> Dear VMD users,
> while starting up VMD I get the following error
> Info) Creating CUDA device pool and initializing hardware...
> CUDA error: out of memory, line 91
> GPU-Z reports that about 200 MB of the 1024 MB are available on the GTS
> 250 before I run VMD. Afterwards there is no significant change in memory
> allocation.
> The problem goes away if I turn the AERO interface (GPU-Z reports only 32
> MB of memory allocated).
> I have installed the newes CUDA drivers (190.38), but the problem
> persists. As soon as AERO is active I get the out of memory exception.
> Does VMD really need more than 800 MB to function or is the error
> somewhere else?
> Best regards,
> Ajasja Ljubetic
> Failed to find registry key.
> Info) VMD for WIN32, version 1.8.7 (August 1, 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, 4 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 2952MB (72%)
> Info) Detected 1 available CUDA accelerator:
> Info) [0] GeForce GTS 250 16 SM_1.1 @ 1.85 GHz, 1024MB RAM, OIO
> Info) Creating CUDA device pool and initializing hardware...
> CUDA error: out of memory, line 91
> Info) OpenGL renderer: GeForce GTS 250/PCI/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL MDE CVA MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVF)
> Info) Full GLSL rendering mode is available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (8192x8192), 3-D (2048x2048x2048), Multitexture (4)
> Info) No joysticks found. Joystick interface disabled.
> Found 68 plugins or data handlers in directory
> 'C:/Program Files/VMD/plugins/WIN32/molfile'.

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078