Hi Tommi,
That is true, but it is also the most extreme comparison possible. A crude estimate of the ranking of drivers would be:
NVIDIA > Intel (these are open source by default) > AMD > radeon (open source amd) > Nouveau (open source nvidia)
While both NVIDIA and AMD hardware are of similar speed (trying to avoid flame war), both are faster than the Intel hardware.
But with the open source modern intel drivers (i.e. near current mesa (I think we are at 10.3)). On any of the recent Intel hardware you should have more than enough gpu ooomph for freeview. (as an example. You can try it out on a friend's macbook air. The current intel linux drivers are faster than the mac drivers and freeview runs great on a macbook air).
HTH, D
On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 4:09 PM, raij@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu wrote:
Hi Dan,
Thanks. While I agree that all kinds of GPUs might be sufficient as far as the hardware and FS computations go, the drivers in fact make a major difference for visualizations. For my card the proprietary NVIDIA drivers turned out to be 10-20 times faster than the CentOS 6.5 Noveau drivers. For example freeview with a couple of layers and little bit of 3D rendering is unusable with the Noeveau drivers and works like a charm with the NVIDIA drivers - the difference is really like day and night.
Cheers,
Tommi
Just to add. If you are not using the CUDA options (which in my understanding aren't being updated anyway), I find that the gpu included in modern Intel cpus is more than sufficient for my FreeSurfer and MNE uses.
HTH D
On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Z K zkaufman@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu wrote:
Tommi,
Here at the Martinos Center we use the proprietary drivers from NVIDIA. We have no reasons to believe the Nouveau drivers would work better, but that isnt to say one doesnt exist.
-Zeke
On 08/22/2014 03:23 PM, raij@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu wrote:
Hi,
Is there a FreeSurfer/MNE (maybe even FSL, TrackVis) recommendation to use the "noveau" drivers that come with CentOS 6.5 or would it be better to go with the proprietary drivers from NVIDIA?
I would imagine that since FS 5.3 does not use GPU for analysis, this is mainly relevant for visualization (freeview etc) requiring 3D rendering of volumes, surfaces, and tractography results simultaneously.
In case it matters, Dell Precision T7500 + NVIDIA Quadra FX 5800 here.
Thanks!
Tommi
Tommi Raij, MD, PhD
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