It’s hard to say without knowing what you want to do. Reading in the file is one thing, but the set of filters you may be interested in can change things around considerably as well. Alas, I’m not well versed in plugging VTK filters together to get a desired effect, nevermind doing it with the right filters for a given hardware configuration. I think posing the question as a “I tried this set of filters together for effects X, Y, Z. Can I do better in performance/approach/etc.?” would elicit better responses to your core issues (and get people who know VTK filters rather than VTK build stuff to respond 
).