In recent years we have been transitioning from traditional UNIX-based interactive graphics workstations, such as those available from Silicon Graphics, and instead relying more heavily on "Wintel" (Microsoft Windows running on Intel Pentium processors) and Linux-based systems coupled with high-performance hardware graphics accelerators to provide for our real-time three-dimensional graphics needs. The reason for this is simple: price-performance value. A fast "professional quality" Pentium 4 computer and a top-of-the-line graphics accelerator card (see below) can now be purchased for around $2,500-3,000. The performance of these systems closely matches, and in many cases far outperforms, systems costing ten times as much just a few years ago.
We prefer not to make specific hardware recommendations for Wintel systems on our web site, if for no other reason than the fact that it is very hard to keep up with what vendors are offering. However, in generic terms, we have had excellent results with major name-brand "professional" systems. These typically come with a fast (1.8Ghz or better) Pentium 4 processor, fast (400Mhz or better) front side bus, SCSI disk drive, error checking and correcting (ECC) RDRAM memory [get as much memory as you can afford - 256MB or more], AGP 4x graphics support (see below), and a multi-year warranty. The detailed specifications for one such system are available here.
For interactive scientific visualization applications, hardware three-dimensional graphics acceleration is extremely desirable, especially when visualizing and manipulating large protein and nucleic acid structures. We have had outstanding results with the Fire GL2 board from ATI Technologies (available for under $800). Other workstation-class PC graphics cards, such as the Fire GL4 and the Wildcat 5110 should work well too. We have also had decent results with the ELSA Gloria III add-in board (available for ~$850) when used with a number of different PC platforms, as well as the older Intel-based Silicon Graphics 330 workstation. Additional details, including some performance comparisons, on these and other add-in graphics boards is available. If you are interested in viewing molecular models and other scientific visualizations in stereo, then definitely consider either the Fire GL2 board or the Oxygen GVX1, along with StereoEyes 3D glasses (available from QualixDirect for $299).
A quick note on Linux-based systems: although Linux runs on a wide variety of Intel-based hardware, and the same graphics cards listed above are usually compatible with this hardware, the availability of Linux OpenGL graphics drivers is very limited. We have only had success to date with NVIDIA and Fire GL2 drivers, so use considerable caution before you commit to something else. And we have found only two Linux OpenGL drivers that support hardware stereo viewing. One is the aforementioned Fire GL2 driver, and the other is Xi Graphics' "Summit" OpenGL series of drivers. We have tested the Fire GL2 driver and StereoEyes glasses with good results, but we have not tested the Summit drivers. However, with the Summit drivers full quad buffered stereo supposedly works on any card with stereo hardware and with at least 32MB of RAM and a viewing rate of 100Hz at the target resolution and depth.
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