From davis@adenosine.pharm.utah.edu Sat Feb 19 15:01:44 1994 Received: from cs.utah.edu for davis@adenosine.pharm.utah.edu by www.ccl.net (8.6.4/930601.1506) id OAA09016; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 14:19:44 -0500 Received: from adenosine.pharm.utah.edu by cs.utah.edu (5.65/utah-2.21-cs) id AA28647; Sat, 19 Feb 94 12:19:27 -0700 Date: Sat, 19 Feb 94 12:22:34 -0700 From: davis@adenosine.pharm.utah.edu (Darrell R. Davis) Posted-Date: Sat, 19 Feb 94 12:22:34 -0700 Message-Id: <9402191922.AA22183@adenosine.pharm.utah.edu> Received: by adenosine.pharm.utah.edu (911016.SGI/5.51) id AA22183; Sat, 19 Feb 94 12:22:34 -0700 To: rks2@crux2.cit.cornell.edu Cc: chemistry@ccl.net In-Reply-To: "Rebecca K. Schmidt"'s message of Fri, 18 Feb 1994 16:02:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: CCL:Visualizing molecules on Indy on Fri, 18 Feb 1994 16:02:06 -0500 (EST), "Rebecca K. Schmidt" said: >> We are considering buying a Silicon Graphics Indy to run QUANTA and >> visualize proteins from molecular dynamics simulations. Apparently the >> Indy does not have a Z-buffer in the hardware. Therefore rotating larger >> proteins would be unsatisfactory since the depth-cueing must be done with >> software and is much slower. I would appreciate hearing about peoples' >> experience with the Indy in this regard and whether this limitation >> prevents it from being a useful graphics workstation for our needs. >> Thank you, >> Rebecca Schmidt We were pleasantly surprised when we demo'ed Biosym Insight/Discover on the Indy's. We have bought 5 PC's and 1 SC all with 24 bit graphics. These machines populate a "graphics lab.". We went in this direction because it was important to maximize the number of boxes that students could access. In a side by side demo with an Indigo R4000 XS/24 Z-buffer, the Indy SC/24 did pretty well. 3D rotations were slower yes, but not painfully so. Having said that. These are not in the same league as our 150 MHz Indigo2 XZ, but they are 0.5 the cost. Depends on what your priorities are and your budget. The Indys are usable machines, but for molecular visualization make sure and get the 24 bit upgrade, still a bargain. -------------------------------------------------------------- Darrell R. Davis Medicinal Chemistry University of Utah --------------------------------------------------------------