Ok, now I have the CRT, it's the first time I have one to work with Bryce. As someone just said yesterday (heheh, you were right!) I'm already pushing the limits, so my renders are long as before haha. Stupid Question #1: is it possible to turn off the monitor while I'm rendering overnight? That's because, to assing priority to Bryce in XP, the CPU is never idle and so the auto stand-by never takes in. Stupid Question #2: I don't have it right now, but wait 'till tomorrow... :-) LOL Thanx in advance, Stefano

I'm also a newbie, so I probably don't know the answer to this but.... most monitors have their own power switches, don't know about new ones. Also, I quite often will minimize Bryce. As far as I can tell it continues to render. Although, I don't think it makes it render any faster that way. But if I'm wrong about this please someone let me know. My monitor still shuts down on power save while Bryce is running. So I can render and sleep at the same time. Ang

I always turn off the monitor overnight :) well it actually turns of automaticaly, check the options in the power manegement

its the screensavers you really shuldnt have optioned on during a long render. if xp (im 98/2k) wont kick in the standby feature on your monitor, turning it off locally still wont affect the render.

Thanks a lot. I still have to understand why the stand by doesn't kicks in, but now I know I can shut it down. :) Stefano

sure, all the action's taking place on the processor, anyway. If you turn it off, you don't need the screen saver ..

To turn the monitor off I just push the button next to the greed LED :) Okay, now you got me pushing buttons again: Zzinnngghh HOO00oo, degaussy 8P

Actually, Rayraz is right. Just turn off the monitor manually. But the other people have a point: turn off the screensaver and the standby mode. The way Windows work, it doesn't matter whether something is working on the processor, it's whether anything's moving on the screen that triggers both the screensaver and the standby monitor. And the line that moves over the picture apparently is not considered monitor action. Been there, done that. Yep, stupid, but that's Windows. Screensaver will ruin your render time something awful and the standby mode can be a pain in the posterior, too. BTW, turning off the monitor will not prevent the screensaver from starting. Ang, minimizing Bryce puts it in the background. Raises render time, too. It's okay for a short work, but...

With most of today's monitors, screensavers are no longer necessary, as phosphor "burn in" is no longer a big problem. The screensavers are mainly for fun. Our newer computers where I work have Windows 2000 Pro and no screensavers at all. I do recommend that you just select "none" from your screensaver list. Bryce doesn't like to share resources with anything else. So I recommend that you run Bryce alone, and shut Bryce down when you want to run other programs. It just works out better for most computers to do it this way. And other than finding the right driver for a plug and play monitor when first installed, there is very little interaction between the cpu and the monitor, so turning the power button off on the monitor shouldn't have any negative effects for the computer. Glad you were able to upgrade your system, and yes, more power means you will try to max out what Bryce can do. :^) Looking forward to seeing what you can do with your new computer, DC.

Thanks again to all. LOL, TJohn, you're right. I'm rendering the challenge image (by the way, praying that it will finish before midnight to post it regularly) and had to turn it down to 800x600 and 36rpp because... oh, well, I got so carried off by all this speed (test renders last 10 minutes! Awesome! Geeeeeeee!) that I cranked in it almost everything, from DOF to SoftShadows to Volumetrics... hehehe, so my estimated render time at 1024 was more or less in the values I had with the old PII... As for the Bryce running issue, I can't use the PC for Bryce only, because I have to do my job on it also. But the tips on screen savers and standby were great, I will take advantage of the XP possibility to have different accounts with different settings and I'll create one optimized just for Bryce renders. Cheers, Stefano

good call.. i sorta do that same thing with 98 and 2k dual-booting... each of those have optimized account for different appz

I always turn off the monitor by the switch on the front, but my pc runs 24/7. I often render at night anyway, let the comp do the work while I sleep. The Bryster

You can set power management to turn off the monitor. Just remember Bryce may want the HD to keep going, in case it needs the virtual memory. Usually I do something else during a long render and visit the 'puter to see how its doing. Nudge the mouse to "wake it up", and yes the line does progress.

Yep yep no screensavers.....win95/98/xp......goto...start.... run....type in ...msconfig....hit enter.....got-to startup tab and uncheck all unecessary start up items so as much ram as possible is free and won't cause any intruptions......"nothing" in here need be checked for your system to run.....you can always go back in after your render and re-enable items you do want in start up.