Simple: I'm working on a PC, 1 Mhz with 128 Mb RAM ... and it works SOOOOO SLOW !!! How do I speed up the rendering time: buy more RAM, or is it the processor that needs upgrading? :-) What computers are YOU guys working on, and whats your horsepower?!!!

More RAM is always a good starting point for Poser. 128MB is a bit on the light side, as it will mean a lot of virtual memory swapping which will slow things down considerably. Once you have sufficient RAM in place to minimise that, then it's time to think about upgrading the CPU. My box is an AthlonXP 2500+ with 1GB of dual channel DDR running on an Nforce2 mobo, and it's pretty nippy. No longer cutting edge though :( Kev.

AthlonXP 1800+ with 1 GB RAM running on something or other. It's not bad. No Ferrari, but not bad. :)

I should say the RAM I'm working on a pentium4 2,66 GHZ and 1 GB RAM

More RAM is always good, but something else you may consider is a way to shave off some of the resource-sucking processes that are running in Windows itself. there are many proggies at tucows.com that will help you tweak performance to this end (while most are made to enhance gaming performance, they work very well for Poser, too.) Case in point: I have an Intel P4 2.0GHz chip on an Intel D845EBG2 motherboard, with 1GB of PC 2700 DDR RAM parked on it. I have roughly 160GB of space, not counting the FireWire drive which gives me up to 80GB more of space (via 3 more hot-swappable hard drives) While it makes no difference to Poser, FWIW I also have a Geforce2MX 400 video card. In Windows 2000, even with most of the bloat shaved out, it still takes a little while rendering things like Vicky3 and etc., and Poser usually eats from 200 to 500MB of RAM doing it. In Linux running Win4Lin (a Win98 emulator), even with Win4Lin throttled to using only 128MB of RAM (which means Poser only gets a max. of 104MB of RAM, tops), I can render Vicky3 in roughly the same amount of time. It's all a matter of ditching the bloat. HTH, /P

kbennett, I know how you feel. Pentium 4 3.06, 1 GB DDR Ram, Asus P4G8X Deluxe MB, on Windows 2000, SP-4. Fast and Stable here. I'd atleast go with 512 MB Ram- IMHO.

My desktop: XP 2800+ on nForceII mobo, 1 GB PC3200 DDR on Windows 2000 My Notebook: Intel P4 3.06GHz with 1 GB DDR on Windows 2000 Somehow my Desktop feels faster than the notebook. Maybe because the Desktop has a 7200 rpm drive.

A 1 Ghz system (I assume you didn't really mean 1 Mhz)is pretty far from state of the art, but I'm suprized Poser even runs on 128 Mb, I thought 256 was about the minimum real-world. I'd get the RAM up to at least 384 Mb, RAM is cheap now, but whatever you buy will not work with your next computer, so don't buy a lot. Hey guys, how about if I make up a P5 based CPU test, like the that is in my Freestuff here so we can get a idea about "modern" computers and how they work on a Firefly render? I'm just breaking in a new computer myself, 2.8 Mhz P4 (overclocked to 3.08), Raid0 SATA drives, matched dual channeled PC3200 memory, also ported, milled, chopped and channeled.

Good idea, Jim, I'm game.

Yeah, Jim, I'd like to see the results of that too :)

I would like to see that too. I have P4 3.06 Intel that does hyperthreading, 512 DDR PC2100, 2 120GB drives and a fairly fast system board from Albitron. Even with the hyperthreading Poser 5 does not even hit the second processor at all. Jim, you better watch out with that RAID 0. You could loose everything. I hope that you have a good backup. Sorry, that is my IBM customer support side coming out! :-)

A Poser Benchmark is a great idea! Any Motherboard with the Intel ICH5R Southbridge (865, 875) can now support SATA RAID 1 in addition to RAID 0. Intel just released the necessary BIOS enhancements. RAM makes more difference than a faster CPU. I bought 1GB of PC3200 DDR Memory and added it to my Athlon 1.2Ghz system (512MB PC2100 DDR) for a total of 1.25GB of RAM. (I had to remove a 256MB module.) Rendering performance improved significantly. A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded to a P4 2.8Ghz 800Mhz FSB processor with an ABIT IS-7 Motherboard. I moved my 1GB of RAM to the new system. Performance is better, but the improvement is not as great as when I added more memory to the Athlon.

Thanks to everyone for your replies!!! Pretty obvious I have to get some more RAM ... (I cant belive you all have 1 Gb of RAM - yiks!!) ... Hrmm, okay, I'll order an 512 MbRAM block online now (was looking at it last night), and hope to God I'll get to see some superfast renderings!!! :-) And Jim B's remark about not buying too much because it'll not work on my next computer ... crap! Makes me wonder if I should hold on for some time, and save up for a whole new computer! :-) NAHHHH!!! :-) Thanks everybody! KiiiM www.udgang99.dk

Yeah and.. perhaps RAM is cheap somewhere but I don't find it to be the case in Denmark :o( I'm still on measly 256Mb. 2Ghz system, but little RAM. Works ok though. Udgang99, Bilka har en ny computer til 3000.- i denne uge ;o) - med ok specs.

ernyoka1: Tjaa, den er jo ca dobbelt sstor som den jeg har nu! :-) ...jeg har fundet 512 Mb RAM pc133, som jeg kan bruge, til 380 kr. Kig pwww.eksperten.dk ... mke kan det svare sig at ke online fra udlandet? Ved det ikke??

380? Det var ellers billigt :o) Jeg mvist hellere lige ryste sparegrisen og se om der kan falde noget ud G

OK, I have 512 of RAM and an 80 gig HD on my HP puter and it still isnt enough, I am about to install another 512 of RAM and a slave HD to boost the virtual memory. I am also about to swap tha old video card for something newer and better. I hope that this will increase my render power! Good luck

Video cards doesn't do any difference to Poser. It doesn't use graphic accelleration at ALL :o( But almost every other 3D program WILL benefit from a better graphics card, so the money aren't lost. Just in relation to Poser they are G But 512 not being enough? :o/ That doesn't sound too good. What processor do you have?

Another thing to take into account is which operating system your running. Memory management in Windows 95 and 98 is really bad, so unless you've got ME or better yet Win 2000 or XP then anything over 256Mb is pretty much unused.

Yes, the fact of life is the state of the art is advancing so fast that while most anything you buy now will (probably) work on your next computer, a lot of it is going to be less than optimal, and will slow it down. But you have to jump in somewhere, and $50 for RAM or so should hold you for awile. The Pentium 5 is supposed to be out around the end of the year, and at that point EVERYBODIES computer will be slightly obsolete! (Plus the P4 chips will all be sold cheaper) O.K., let me do a new (Poser 5 based) test. My new computer does about 36 seconds on the existing CPU test (in my Freestuff here, incidently), which makes it one of the faster Pentiums, but still not all that good against the AMDs (my AMD 1.4 did 43 seconds). I was hopeing Pentiums did better in P5. ;-)

I'm just putting a new computer together to speed up rendering of animations. I'm going from a Pentium III 850 Mgz with 512 meg SDRAM to an Athalon 2500 with 1 gig DDR. I went with the slower speed of DDR so that I could afford 1 Gig. I've got the parts just have to put them together some time this week. Any Idea what kind of a speed increase I can expect in rendering in Poser 5?

Good question, I've just posted the link for the CPU Test - P5, as a new thread, maybe we can all find out!

I will run the test on both machines and post the results in this thread.

I've been told MHZ is the only thing.