From: Karsten Suhre (karsten.suhre_at_igs.cnrs-mrs.fr)
Date: Wed Apr 06 2005 - 11:09:58 CDT

  Dear VMD-users and -developpers,

  given the ever recurring problems with hardware compatibilities, I would be
interested in your suggestions concerning the selection of a new Linux
machine, that what kind of graphics card to select / avoid, what kind of
processor, motherboard, etc. would you recommend?

  I.e. do you know of a good configuration that can be used AT THE SAME TIME
for high end computing (molecular dynamics with NAMD) and high throughput
BLAST database searches (limitted by disk access, but very scalable) and for
3-D STEREO Visualization with VMD (incl. of course ray-tracing and the like).

  Ideally, I would be looking for a 4-processor board, but it seems there is
no such with AGP or PCI-Express support (correct?).

  How about the processor - is a 64-bit Opteron a good choice? Or would you
stick to 32 bit for compatibility reasons?

  Is NVIDIA still the "standard" for Stereo graphics under VMD?

  I would be very grateful for all comments, and I am sure others on this list
will benefit from it as well,

  Kind regards,

  Karsten