"Does the latest red-hot graphics card the gamers are buying make any difference for 3-D work?" Yes they usually do (all the "big ones" at least), but Poser do not make use of "hardware acceleration". "And what about other render engines?" In Poser you can only use the P4 or Firefly rendering engines. I would suggest (as everyone else) alot of RAM, minimum 1 Gb (dual channel). One thing to keep in mind when bying a motherboard is how many RAM-slots it has. Usually there are 3, which is useless if you are going for "dual channel" because you can only use "pairs" of RAM. Buy a motherboard which have 4 RAM-slots (dual). In that case you could start with 1 Gb (2x512 Mb) RAM and later on (if need be) expand with another 1 Gb (2x512 Mb).