VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 09 2014 - 13:41:14 CST

Hi,
  I don't know much about those two specific cards, so my answer
is based on generalities of these classes of cards.
Assuming you do not plan to do stereoscopic display, then the
GeForce option is fine given that the GeForce config you listed had
equal per-card memory capacity to the Quadro option you listed.

The ALU or "CUDA core" counts aren't always directly comparable among
cards due to clock rates, but in this case I would think they are roughly
comparable. One thing to be aware of is that your battery life will be
near-zero when running two high-end GPUs (of any kind), whereas it would
at least be tolerable when using a single GPU. If you intend to use the
laptop as a desktop replacement and will be plugged in most of the time,
then this may not be as big of an issue.
The Quadro is likely more energy efficient than the GeForce,
but that's part of the the nature of comparing a pro card vs. a
top-end gaming oriented card. Anyway, either of those options will
likely do well for you so long as you have solid drivers and there
are not other considerations (e.g. along the lines of the battery life
or power consumption issues) that would play a significant factor.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sun, Feb 09, 2014 at 02:29:41PM -0500, Charles McAnany wrote:
> Friends,
> I'm in the market for a new computer, and I'm pretty much sold on a
> Eurocom Panther laptop. I am looking at the GPU options, and I'd like to
> get your opinions on whether I should go:
> 4GB Quadro K5000M, 1344 CUDA ($1405)
> or
> SLI; 8GB; 2x4GB GTX 780M, 1536 CUDA ($890)
> The internet seems to think that the high-end cards are only worth the
> cost with CAD and 'professional' applications, but not for gaming. I'm not
> sure where VMD falls in the spectrum of 'professionality' of its GPU
> usage.
> Also, for quick NAMD+CUDA runs, I presume the latter option would be
> better, but I don't have any better argument than "1536 > 1344".
> Can anyone share their experience in this regard?
> Cheers,
> Charles McAnany,
> Graduate student, University of Virginia, Mura Lab. 

-- 
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/