[vtkusers] Re: Best video card for VTK?

[Elvis Chen]

On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 18:30, Dave Reed wrote:

> If you're using Linux, I'd definitely go with ATI since open source
> drivers exists for their ATI 8500 (as of XFree 4.3) and below and they
> release their specs to developers so hopefully eventually open source
> drivers will exist for their current cards. ATI also started releasing
> Linux binary drivers for all their cards so you can hardware
> acceleration right now with their drivers.


correct me if I'm wrong, but the open source driver, as embedded in
XFree, does NOT have 3D hardware acceleration at all.  It is primarily a
2D driver.  3D calculation will be performed using MESA (software)
instead.

If you are developing under linux, and does not mind closed-source
driver, go with nvidia.  Their (closed-source) OpenGL driver is pretty
muture.  ATI also just released their own (closed-source) driver.  BUT
1) it is buggy, and 2) doesn't work with OEM (Powered-by ATI) ATI cards.

If you are developing under windows, and wants the fastest video card
that money can buy, ATI 9700pro (and 9800pro if you can wait) is your
best bet.  These two cards will outperform any current nvidia video
cards.

If you do volume-rendering, take ATI over nvidia for its memory
bandwidth.  If you have very large surface meshes, nvidia FX is probably
better.  nvidia has some toolkit (and opengl extension) that may aid in
volume rendering as well.

-- 
Elvis Chen <anisotropic7 at yahoo.ca>
Queen's University

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