VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 27 2011 - 23:22:29 CST

Hi,
  Since you're talking about a Mac, things are likely going to be
much better than they are with the same graphics hardware under Linux.
That said, I can say with complete certainty that you would get much
better performance out of AMD or NVIDIA chips. If you feel strongly
compelled to go with the Intel-based 13" MacBook Pro, then my suggestion
is to try it out in one of the Apple stores, make them let you
download install VMD on it so you can play with it in the store
before you buy... If you're planning work with large molecular
complexes with over 100,000 atoms, then you should probably go with
an AMD or NVIDIA GPU.

Cheers,
  John

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 10:28:40PM -0600, Peixi Zhu wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How does the Intel HD graphics 3000 support VMD/OpenGL? Is the display
> going to be slow or even freeze if I run my molecules, especially when I
> add complex 3D effects?
>
> The reason I ask is that I want to buy a 13" MacBook Pro laptop. But that
> line has replaced the original discrete Nvidia with Intel HD 3000. I
> cannot buy a laptop which doesn't run VMD well so I need to be cautious.
>
> Thanks a lot. 

-- 
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