[vtkusers] nvidia GeForce/GeForce2 cards with RedHat 6.2and vtk

[Carlos Manzanares]

>

Hi, i'll try to make it clearer...

> As you might know, Robert Riviere and I are maintaining a simple VTK 3D
> benchmarks and a database that holds the results for every configuration.
> http://www.hds.utc.fr/~barre/vtk/sphere-bench.html
> the results are here :
> http://www-sop.inria.fr/caiman/personnel/Robert.Riviere/vtk/sphere-bench/#re
> sults
>
> Some users have already tested the GeForce and the Visual 320 : the SGI
> computer is 3 to 4 times faster than the GeForce configuration (and the SGI
> 540 is actually ruling the test). I know that other pieces of the hardware
> are involved (RAM, bus and so on), but I guess that if I had a GeForce in
> my computer, I'd not get such good performances (but it's expensive also).

I am not really surprised about these results, since SGI has said that their linux drivers
with nVIDIA are up to 40% faster than the usual drivers (developed only by nVIDIA). (btw i
didn't know about this benchmarks, tahnk you very much!, i think it is a great idea!)

>
> Or maybe is the hardware done by Nvdia, but completely unrelated to the
> actual GeForce architecture. The Visual SGI computer does not have any
> "graphic card", the whole stuff mother-board + graphics chips + RAM + bus
> is a single unit.

I spoke personally with a SGI engineer  in this meeting and i asked exactly about the graphic
chip inside their visual workstations, she replied me that actually it is a nVIDIA GeForce
chip with a graphic card developed in SGI (it means the memory, buses, etc from SGI). I asked
as well if they are going to use the GeForce 2 in their new workstations and she replied me
that she didn't know.
So it means that nVIDIA makes the GPU (as they like to call it), then SGI use this chip
(GeForce) with their "graphic cards" and develop the drivers with the nVIDIA engineers; the
collaboration between nVIDIA and SGI comes from some years ago (their labs are really close in
USA, just one in front of eachother).

>
> Or are you talking about future Visual workstations (I've haven't heard
> anything about them) ?

I am talking about the Silicon Graphics 230 Visual Workstation with VPro Graphics (VPro is the
commercial name from SGI for this graphic set).

Ok, anyway i am not a SGI worker, and this engineer from SGI could be wrong...

--Carlos--