Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 9, 2006 Share Posted March 9, 2006 I'm using Houdini a lot on my Thinkpad R40 series.. (which i had for really cheap time ago..) and it obviosuly sucks since the gfx board is anything related to 3D graphics.. but I'm considering buying a T43p series with ATI FireGL V3200 and I need to know if anyone here have experience with such setup .. or at least with that graphics card... I dont like ATI.. but i Love Thinkpads and I wont go for a Dell just cause of the QuadroFx... i still wish to stay on Thinkpad. how the ATI FireGL (V3200 in details) works with Houdini? we all know abou ATI problems.. but such V3200 should be latest generation.. maybe its working good now? any feedback are really welcomed cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted March 9, 2006 Share Posted March 9, 2006 For what's it worth, I don't think that Houdini really has much problems with video *hardware* per se. I can still run Houdini 8 on a GeForce 2 GTS. What really matters though are well implemented OpenGL drivers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 9, 2006 Author Share Posted March 9, 2006 Yeah I know but.. still... I usually run H8 at home on my QuadroFx 1300 and.. tried last night on the "gaming peecee" which is a SLI GF7800GTX... the GTX actually kicks the Quadro in performance (well.. SLI.. plus is really powerfull itself).. but you got many "problems" like not seeying the wires in the net view.. or some refresh problems in viewport ... hence that's why i prefer to stay on "certified" OpenGl cards (quadroFX for example over a Geforce).. we had old thread started also by me about ATI cards and laptops.. and currently my Thinkpad have a seriously crap gfx board, plus is an ATI... but still.. problems are just for speed (workaroundable with H8 Environments) .. nothing related to "functiontality".. GF2 were (are) known to be easly "hacked" with drivers or even hardware mods (i did in the past as well)... but nowadays best choice is really Quadro or FireGL... what i just didnt tried yet cause i dont have FireGL since years.. are H8 on such boards.. Spending such amount of money for a Thinkpad with FireGL makes me wonder how they works on it.. I didnt liked the X600 boards but i guess X600 stands to Geforce like FireGl stands to Quadro, hopefully. What I'm planning.. is to sell my home workstation (QuadroFX) and just use a powerfull laptop which will be nothing else than Thinkpad (Dell aare really nice.. but i love Thinkpads).. and then I'd like to be "sure" it works cool on FireGL I'm starting to organize myself to be "on the road" when it needs.. and having a "collection" of peecees is not worth as having a collection of SGI machines, which i hope I wont sell anytime soon yet.. cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted March 9, 2006 Share Posted March 9, 2006 Personally, I think neither of the nVidia or ATI OpenGL drivers are as good as they should be. ATI: - Still haven't released a newer driver yet since I reported the memory leak bug which they have supposedly fixed for the next release. A memory leak bug which makes it nearly impossible to do long playbacks without running out of memory and crashing. - On some driver versions on Windows, incorrectly reports that some OpenGL extensions are available when they are actually not. nVidia: - Broke the multi-core code path when they introduced multithreading. Random crashes, 100% CPU usage, etc. - Not sure if they've released the driver to the bugs which I reported yet. On the otherhand, I've been running a prerelease driver that shows the multi-core code path fixed on WinXP for Houdini. - Best to stay on the 7X.XX series drivers on Windows - 7X.XX series drivers on Linux seem to have serious stability problems so you have to go to the 8X.XX drivers. However, then they provide a method to disable the multi-threading on in Linux for the 8X.XX drivers. <sigh> - On the hand, they seem to have less problems on the whole than ATI. At least with possible workarounds. Maybe it's time to start reminscing about the old ol'driver days on IRIX? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 9, 2006 Author Share Posted March 9, 2006 [...]Maybe it's time to start reminscing about the old ol'driver days on IRIX? 25496[/snapback] ehehe.. believe me.. I'm so sad SideFx dropped IRIX develpment.. I'd like to enjoy my ROCK STABLE Octane2 with it .. sadly it have Houdini 6 on it ... which is fun.. but old. Also .. I must admit I'll try the Onyx2 with H6 maybe .. I'm a bit buzy these days.. but I didnt tried yet on it.. pretty "noisy" machine.. but will be fun to see Houdini on a 100kg purple cube cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peship Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 I bought Toshiba laptop not so far ago - it comes with some ATI video. Every time when i click over the UI ( Houdini's UI i mean ) and it lags for several seconds. I spent some time changing video drivers and stuff, but nothing really helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 12, 2006 Author Share Posted March 12, 2006 I bought Toshiba laptop not so far ago - it comes with some ATI video.Every time when i click over the UI ( Houdini's UI i mean ) and it lags for several seconds. I spent some time changing video drivers and stuff, but nothing really helps. 25553[/snapback] Is It a FireGL Ati card?.. or the old Radeon? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bensimons Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 [sGI] Yes, there was seldom a "driver issue" with the sgi's. Maybe the occaisional patch. I ran Houdini on an Onyx2 at Sydney VisLab. The Onyx2 loved geometry! It'd rip through giant terrain meshes. Oh, and display stereo! mmmm. [Laptop] I read your thinkpad preference. In case you can't find the IBM you want, I thought I'd comment. I've been running Houdini on a Dell Inspiron 8600 Laptop without problem. There's a GeForce FX Go6560 graphics card in it (128MB VideoRam). One of the unusual things about the Dell Laptop is you can swap out the graphics card. It's not built in. I found that reassuring when I bought it, though in reality, i doubt i'd ever change it. I'd just get a new laptop.. [Linux] Initially I ran WindowsXP (until M$ Windows drove me nuts and i installed linux!). For the past year I've run Houdini strictly under Linux (Gentoo, 2.6 kernel, www.gentoo.org). Houdini runs well. Currently 8.0.460 installed. The linux utility "nvidia-settings" reports my Linux Driver Version: 1.0-6629. There might be a newer NVidia driver version, but I don't see any reason to fix what ain't broke. cheers, ben. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 [sGI] Yes, there was seldom a "driver issue" with the sgi's. Maybe the occaisional patch. I ran Houdini on an Onyx2 at Sydney VisLab. The Onyx2 loved geometry! It'd rip through giant terrain meshes. Oh, and display stereo! mmmm.[Laptop] I read your thinkpad preference. In case you can't find the IBM you want, I thought I'd comment. I've been running Houdini on a Dell Inspiron 8600 Laptop without problem. There's a GeForce FX Go6560 graphics card in it (128MB VideoRam). One of the unusual things about the Dell Laptop is you can swap out the graphics card. It's not built in. I found that reassuring when I bought it, though in reality, i doubt i'd ever change it. I'd just get a new laptop.. [Linux] Initially I ran WindowsXP (until M$ Windows drove me nuts and i installed linux!). For the past year I've run Houdini strictly under Linux (Gentoo, 2.6 kernel, www.gentoo.org). Houdini runs well. Currently 8.0.460 installed. The linux utility "nvidia-settings" reports my Linux Driver Version: 1.0-6629. There might be a newer NVidia driver version, but I don't see any reason to fix what ain't broke. cheers, ben. 25603[/snapback] thanks for your great post... actually i'm going for a Thinkpad cause i love 'em.. i'm currently using a R40 which i got for cheap.. and which obviosuly wont give me any help with Houdini (I had to use the OGL Environments of Houdini to make it "running".. but slow) .. and yeah I know Dell would be the best choice.. but.. I love Thinkpads too much and I just hope the FireGl V3200 will fit enought my needs.. I dont go for the T60p just because nowadays is like buying a DVD immediately after it comes out.. just wait couple of months and price will drop down .. so i go for a loaded T43p .. and maybe within next 6/8 months I'll swap. still unsure about loading Windoze or Linux.. just because I've too many "small apps" which still doesnt run on Linux but I'm quitting all of those one by one .. and maybe the T43p will run Linux on it.. dunno yet. Thanks for your feedbacks. cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 14, 2006 Author Share Posted March 14, 2006 and just in case... can you give me any hints about installing (and make it run) Linux on such thinkpad? I'm considering SUSE 10.0 after i read some of the results of "google" ... but I'm still unsure if I'd go for Windows XP or Linux yet.. i can easly get rid of those small apps actually.. and I want a performant Thinkpad... thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deecue Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 why not just get windows and install Suse after the fact with a dual boot.. will be much better than having Linux put on and later needing windows for one of those small apps in which the windows installer will most likely cake your linux partitions.. Oh, and display stereo! display stereo ehh?? but you can do this with any computer that has dual monitors.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 14, 2006 Author Share Posted March 14, 2006 why not just get windows and install Suse after the fact with a dual boot.. will be much better than having Linux put on and later needing windows for one of those small apps in which the windows installer will most likely cake your linux partitions.. Yeah I'll might go for that solution.. what i just hate is to "waste" lot of disk space just to have a windoze installation.. just for few needed apps.. But laptop aint arrived (nor ordered) yet.. so I've got few more time to decide display stereo ehh?? but you can do this with any computer that has dual monitors.. 25619[/snapback] LOL you should see what a Single Onyx2 Stereo monitor shows then cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MG Posted March 15, 2006 Share Posted March 15, 2006 Speaking of laptops, I'm on one rightnow. In fact, it's my main, erm..., workstation. It's equipped with a GeForce4 Go420 (32 MB). It works great, except for some odd clipping error. I can manually 'fix' it by adjusting the near clipping pane, though it's still a bit annoying. With my `old Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.