VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 21 2005 - 17:23:53 CDT

Simon,
  You didn't mention what operating system you're planning to run on your
PC-based graphics machines, so it's hard to give a specific reply.
On Linux, the best stereoscopic solution currently seems to be nVidia Quadro.
On Windows, you should have good results from most of the
3DLabs Wildcat Realizm, nVidia Quadro, and ATI FireGL cards.
I've found the 3DLabs cards to be available at a nice price point if you're
running Windows. A good card is likely to cost you at least $800 however,
regardless who you get it from. Watch out for buying any of the older
Quadro x00 series cards as they had a number of bugs/problems that are
fixed in the newer Quadro [123]000 series cards. The most popular
stereo glasses are usually the Stereographics CrystalEyes glasses, they've
been available for more than a decade and they work with basically anything
out there. They are not cheap however, they typically cost nearly $1,000
or so for a pair of glasses plus emitters and any extra cables you might need.
You might be able to do better if you can get an educational discount or
something of that sort.

  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 11:34:53AM +0100, Simon Whitehead wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> We are currently looking into buying some hardware for our lab group that would enable us to use stereoview on VMD plus other programs such as Coot, NOC and Swiss Pdb viewer which we use for our crystallographic refinement and structural analysis. We use PC`s and have looked at the NVidia quadro chipset based graphics cards but are unsure about what are the minimum requirements needed to produce good quality stereoview with a decent refresh rate and resolution. As there are cards available which range from £200-£2000 we are not quite sure what we really need. Also further to this does anyone know of companies who produce good quality stereo glasses?
>
> Kind Regards
>
> Simon Whitehead 

-- 
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