Ok, i'm new here, and have to admit, i haven't read everything yet, and am only a new Bryce user, but i'm hooked already. This may sound stupid, but, i have a question... Does XP versus Win 98 make a difference in render times? I recently created an indoor room pic and the final render in the default size was to take over 10 hours. I sent the file to a friend and asked Him to see if His pc went faster...and His render time was just over 1 hour.... Same settings, same file.... I've got 512mb ram with the standard amount applied to graphics (would change that if i could) Brand new processor, maybe 3 mos old at most, with 40 gig HD. I operate on win 98 and he is on XP. Does that make sense? anyhow, am working on my first attempt at a waterfall, when it looks semi decent, would like to post for thoughts....lol Jen

Good question, I'm not sure if OS'es make much difference, although I've noticed renders (and Bryce itself) runs really really nice on a clean Windows 2003 build...maybe it's just coincedance. MD

A difference in OS's won't make a difference like that. There is some difference between your two PC's. With THAT much of a difference you can bet that his CPU has a faster clock speed. I noticed a speed difference in OS's; When I moved from Win98SE to Win2000Pro, there was an overall performance boost, but not one that would allow me to render 10 times faster than before. AS

Well that might be a pretty cool experiment to try-everyone that wants to could download the same file and render, report render times, system specs. Maybe AS could put something in the Back Room if the idea takes off?? (Sorry about volunteering you AS-LOL). You can just ignore this, just thinking out loud. Arleen

Ring...I'd be willing to try it. I got 2 systems I can run it on too. One with a 1.4 Athlon w/ 256 DDR and another that's a 1.0 P3 w/ 256 of SDRAM...I know the Athlon is faster (obviously) but would be cool to see those benchmarks against what others have. MD

Cool! Guess we would need to decide what to put in the file, etc. Any ideas anyone?? Arleen

We can run somewhat of a benchmark, say when people render, will it have to be rendered to disk, or a straight 'regular' render...volumetrics, lighting, etc...those are things we gotta consider. Also, should we have it so people render while their computer is doing nothing else (no Web surfing, etc...) We should maybe figure out what people use on average, a happy medium of sorts with scene features. This could get interesting if we have enough participants. Any other opinions? MD

Attached Link: http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/309/11

Attached Link: http://www.knucks3dstuff.com/benchmarks.html

Attached Link: http://www.planet-3d.com/bmark.htm

Nice links AS...gives me something to look at. Hell it was just the other day I was checking out that second one you listed...how quickly I forget sometimes. Ugh...... MD

Attached Link: http://www.gauchito.com/bryce/render_times/

ok, now i really need to know what speed processor i have...i know i bought it in a pc sotre built brand new just then..but have no clue of the specs since it was a small store, and not a commercial chain that likes to post those sorts of things...(sheesh, is it to much to ask to know what i got? grins) will call the store tomorrow and let ya know

looked there and don't have a system summary folder....but also looked around in the others, and didn't see it there either....will also check on reboot to see it it's there someplace...

now we're all madly curious about your computer's name... :) S.

I just keep it under wraps, online hackers. (I do piss some people off as a Mod here, lol) AS

hehehe...good call AS. :) MD

What about background processes? They take some cycles.

I've got three systems, an Athlon 1.8GHz, an Athlon 2.2GHz, and an Athlon 2.6GHz. I wouldn't mind doing a benchmarch on each of them. Catlin

You can also find CPU in the Control panel/system though it may not give the Mhz only the name of the chip.

Well 730Mhz isn't a turtle speed but by todays standards it is a low end machine. Of course anything past 6-12 months old becomes low end with todays 2+ Ghz chips :) Your RAM seems pretty good. The only way to make renders faster is to get a faster CPU. I went from a 900 Mhz AMD Athlon to a AMD Athlon 2000+ (1.67 Ghz) and it renders about twice as fast (because it is comparable to a 2.0 Ghz Pentium). Just make sure you leave enough virtual memory on the hard drive for windows to use (at least 200 MB) or you'll get problems and crashes. If you have a free partition move your virtual memory to that partition drive and let it have the drive all to itself. This will reduce fragmenting and increase computer performance due to not having to defragment the drive from time to time.

Pent II? I would bet no higher than 450 Mhz if you're lucky.

Well it must be horribly low, I can't find it anywhere in the paperwork. It was top of the line 5 yrs ago and I was surprised to find usb ports on it. oh well, if I could find my old homework assignments I remember having to go into the bios and look up the pc info but that was a whole year ago. Soon as I can, I'm going to get a new computer. Of course I've been saying that for years. Now my daughter is going to go to college this fall. Won't be a lot of spare change for a long time. At least I don't have six kids, lol.

College...at least I don't have to worry about that for at least 6 years :) The way things are going she is going to have to pay for it herself. Being a single parent is a b*tch. :(