Video Card Requirements

Insight has very light requirements for 3D acceleration (3D GPU and graphics cards). The 3D view requires OpenGL 2.1 and is 100% compatible with most recent GPUs. Insight does not use GPU acceleration for general computation and processing.

With updated drivers, almost all professional and consumer-grade AMD and NVIDIA chipsets work equally well. Some older on-board Intel GPUs (prior to 2013) may not be fast enough to provide a good experience.

We recommend:

  • Consumer or professional GPU (e.g. NVIDIA GTX, AMD Radeon RX)
  • 1GB RAM
  • use the latest video drivers

Considerations for Laptops

Many modern laptops include two display devices:

  • A power efficient on-board graphics device with limited performance
  • A high-performance NVIDIA or ATI device with enhanced 3D support

The laptop should automatically switch to the high-performance device when Insight launches, but it may not. Check the Control Panel (Windows) or the Energy Saver panel (macOS) for this setting.

3D Chipsets and Manufacturers

Any display device from NVIDIA or AMD (formerly ATI) since 2007 should work, provided the device drivers are up-to-date.

Intel Graphics

Some older (pre-2015) Intel GPUs have performance issues because of slow speed and limited 3D support. More recent Intel Iris and Intel HD Graphics 5***, 5**, 6** (and higher) chipsets should perform much better.

Consumer vs. Professional Grade GPUs

Insight does not require a professional level GPU (e.g. NVIDIA Quadro). Consumer-grade GPUs (e.g. GTX 10**) perform equivalently and are much less expensive.

Display Drivers

Video drivers run at the lowest levels of the system, so bugs in drivers can cause virtually infinite problems, even those that seem unrelated to 3D.

Most of the problems experienced with the Insight 3D View are not the fault of Insight, but rather the video drivers. Upgrading to the latest drivers resolves the issue in almost all cases.

New drivers are released often, so IT departments rarely update them unless there is a specific problem. It is common to find new computers with drivers that are 2 to 3 years old.

Note: Some remote desktop, virtual machine, or cloud-based environment service providers like Citrix and VNC provide proper support for 3D graphics, while some do not. It is also important to properly configure the virtualised environment. 

We will certainly do our best to help, but issues related to virtualised environments will likely have to be referred to the relevant service providers. If you require further assistance, kindly contact support. 

Note: On Linux systems with NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA drivers are required. The default Nouveau driver is currently not compatible with the 3D View.