Yep AMD and huge amounts of the fastest possible RAM = best bang for buck, next gen of chips is even more telling that AMD chips are plain and simple more efficient clock for clock. I'd be tempted to stick in another 1/2 Gig of RAM, I quite often have renders that go up to the 750M+ mark Strange that AMD moved to the equivalent rating thing because they were losing the clock war, Intel are considering doing the same thing because people are realising clock speed isn't everything :)

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.