VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 11:13:26 CST

Benjamin,
  Not everyone has the same experience with regard to 10.3 fixing
the performance problem. It seems to be very dependent on which graphics
chipset is in a given machine. I'm talking with people at Apple now however
and I'm giving them test code and information that should help them track
down the problem. As best I can tell, certain versions of the MacOS X
OpenGL drivers have problems with creating and destroying display lists
at a rapid pace. I've already changed the VMD source code to
significantly reduce the number of display list creations/destructions
compared with previous versions, but I am hoping that by working with the
Apple guys we can nail the performance problem in the Apple OpenGL drivers
so its no longer an issue at all.

Any idea when they'll release 10.3.1?

I appreciate your feedback, the more info we have from various people
the more I can tell the Apple guys about who is experiencing the performance
problem.

Thanks!
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 06:49:02PM -0800, Benjamin Goldsteen wrote:
> FYI,
> Panther (MacOS X 10.3) appears to have fixed the
> OpenGL problem that caused VMD to run slow when the
> axes were enabled. VMD 1.8.1 is very fast on my
> AlBook with ATI 9600 graphics card when booted in
> Panther. This is not to say that the new sphere code
> isn't a good idea in general.
>
> Also, but, unrelated to VMD, Panther's X11 also also
> fixes a problem that caused MOLMOL's bitmap plotting
> to generate garbage bitmap files (I believe it was
> something related to pbuffers).
>
> It might be wise to wait for the imminent MacOS X
> 10.3.1, but, overall, it looks like they cleaned up a
> few things in Panther.
>
>
> ----
> Hi,
>   The Axes being disabled are really only a temporary
> workaround,
> as other things can also cause the slowdown, but I've
> already rewritten
> the sphere rendering code in VMD to avoid this problem
> in the next
> version of VMD (1.8.2), so the next version will
> perform much better
> in call cases, and having the Axes on or off should
> not trigger this
> performance problem ever again.
>
>
> Thanks,
>   John
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 11:12:39AM -0700, Charles
> McCallum wrote:
> > I've always had the axes disabled, so I never
> noticed the slowdown.
> > On my 1.25GHz AlBook the speed is quite nice and
> smooth (due mostly to
> > the 9600 video card, no doubt!).
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 05:00 US/Pacific,
> Dafydd Jones wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >  I have recently upgraded my machine from a G3 400
> MHz Powerbook to
> > > a G4 1GHz Powerbook and now VMD 1.8.1 (and 1.8)
> runs very very
> > > slowly on my new machine. Does anybody have any
> idea why this is?
> > > Both machines are running 10.2.8. The OpenGL
> renderer on my present
> > > machine used by VMD is ATI Radeon 9600 OpenGL
> Engine whereas on my
> > > older machine it is Ati Rage 128 Pro OpenGL
> engine. My OpenGL
> > > framework on the G4 is OpenGL 1.2.4.10.0 as it is
> on my old
> > > machine.
>
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-- 
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