As an amateur and beginner I am going to have myself an new pc build is suited for Poser and Vue d'Esprit (and eventually some Studio Max later on). What would you artists and professionals and advanced amateurs advise me ? It will be a pentium 4 of about 2.5 gig. The thing I wonder about is the graphics card and the amount of ram?? I would like to keep it (without monitor) around 1500 US.Dollar, or 1500 Euro's.(I know in professional terms this is very lowbudget)

As far as the RAM is concerned, I am in the process of increasing mine from 512mB to 1Gb. The more the better seems to be the concensus around here. Anything over 512Mb means you have to be looking at an NT based operating system rather than Win98 though. WinXP is my choice. As for the graphics card I'll pass on a recommendation there. I use a GeForce 4 with 128Mb, but I don't know enough about alternative cards to make an informed judgement. Some people swear by Radeon, some swear by GeForce. I just swear when things don't work. :o).

Well, I don't think Poser of Vue take advantage of 2 processors...so you'll probably want one really fast processor and lots o' ram. I'd first consider your motherboard, make sure the FSB is fast, and that its got plenty of room for future upgrades (PCI slots/memory slots). Make sure its got a fast AGP port, etc. Then buy your fast processor(s). Get AT LEAST one gig of RAM, make sure its registered, don't skimp here. then from there, PSU (>350W), drives, etc. whatever you want/need to customize it. I do prefer the ATI graphics cards. but I won't go into detail about it. Evo

Pricewatch.com

Just had to make a correction here! Vue will take advantage of multiple processors. And if you have multiple computers on a network, Mover 4 (an add-on for Vue 4 which adds full Poser 4 pz3 animation import) also provides network rendering for animation. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

my bad, thanks Lynn. So you may want to consider a dual processor board, doc69... one example is the MSI K7D Master-L , built for dual Athlon MP processors, (which by the way much less expensive than their Intel counterparts)

I have a P4 with 2.4 Ghz chip, 512Mb Ram and a Geforce 4 128 Mb graphics card. Poser 5 works nicely. I don't have Vue, but I have 3ds 4, which also works nicely on the computer. It cost me about 700 without the monitor and that was in Nov 2002. Maybe it'll be less. The only complaint I have is when you export a poser figure as a obj and import it into 3ds after enlarging it, it tents to get a little slower cause there are so many verticies. Other than that, everything is great. Yeah check out pricewatch.com. It's great.

You may want to think twice before building an AMD dually. The processors are considerably more expensive, and they are still limited to a 266FSB. Registered memory costs a pretty penny, and cooling the system will get tricky. You will need a good power supply, more money. In the end, you will spend a lot of money and still not see much of a performance gain.

If you are going to spend money, spend it on...

333mhzFSB(if AMD)
533mhzFSB(if P4, don't buy Celeron)
MOTHERBOARD!!! So many prefab systems use crap, it is no good if you can't upgrade the processor or memory is limited.
Don't waste your time with less than ATA133 7200rpm harddrive
MEMORY...AT LEAST PC2700 DDR333...BRAND NAME not value RAM, look at latency number Think low
Finally as much processor as you can afford! Just remember prices drop, an XP1800+ for @$50!!! When prices drop further you can upgrade to the XP3000 Barton.

Think ahead, think upgrade.
Don't buy top of the line processors!

Thanks so much for this information, in a shop they only sell you what they want to get rid of (most of the time) You people are fantastic!!

Aye, there's a good benchmark over at the Mojoworld site, I think the link is http://www.calyxa.pandromeda.com This shows the potency of the various CPU/RAM setups, in this case leave the Macs at home, they are too slow to even be considered, and between the Pentium and the AMD chips? Well, Calyxa doesn't lie... Don't waste your money on inferior chips, just because they have cooler names.