Hi all, I'm getting myself a new computer, it has hyper-threading and PCI Express graphics capabilities. Does anyone know if Poser (5 or 6) can utilize these features? Thanks, Leee

nope they dont support HT

Too bad, I might as well leave it turned off then, I read that it can actually slow down your computer with some software. Thanks for the response, anxcon.

So what's this PCI Express thing? I thought it was an advance to move away from PCI to AGP?!

From what I understand PCI Express (not to be confused with PCIx) will allow much greater bandwidth between the CPU and graphics card. It seems to be on all the newer boards.

Honestly, that's what I love about Poser so much, it just doesn't beg for the latest and most expensive technology. It runs great on an even slightly older setup. I really wish some of the other 3D applications I've got would be like, not relying on expensive hardware to get the best out of it.

Yeah, PCI Express is more or less "another generation" of PCI; it's faster and has additional capabilities. In particular, in this context, it's fast enough to replace the AGP connection on which graphics cards used to rely because the main bus (e.g., PCI) couldn't handle the necessary bandwidth.

And also yes, "Hyperthreading" can indeed slow down a lot of parallel jobs, because the so-called "threads" are fairly simple. Most CPU chips for a long time have been pipelined and parallelized -- they can issue multiple instructions while waiting for others to finish. Hyperthreading lets the chip designers say they can fill more of those instruction slots simply by adding an extra instruction pointer (PC) and some control logic. However, because a lot of the chip logic (including most cache memory) is shared between the "threads", they do interfere with each other.

Poser isn't multithreaded (even Poser 6, so far as we've heard), but much of the OS stuff, including graphics and file access that happens as a result of Poser will run in separate OS processes or threads, and therefore, if you're lucky, Hyperthreading may speed things up a little.

Since Poser 6 can use OpenGL for previews, a fast graphics card on PCI Express might be able to render a little faster than an AGP card. But you're unlikely to notice much difference unless the scene has an enormous amount of geometry and textures... or possibly if it can render realtime animation previews with full texturing.

CL have gone on record as saying that although Poser 6 doesn't support Hyperthreading, it can and does "handle" it ok. Whatever that means! I also have a HT P4 chip so here's hoping!!

Don't forget that together with OGL you also get the problems with different setups, different drivers and different cards. It can be a step ahead in workflow as you get faster screen redraw (that's what it does: faster sr and some options to see textures etc) but when something goes wrong, it can be the cause of freezes that can only be solved by a forced shut down. Or disappearing cursors ("smart" screen redraw etc). OGL "works" with our gamer's cards, but to have it really like it should, you need a quite expensive card. Also: coding OGL is very difficult as there are lots of variables. And last but not least: Apple still has not provided good drivers for the G5's gamers level cards. Many users of "high-end" 3D applications complain about that. Perhaps this sounds quite negative, but OGL can be the cause of much frustration.

Much of the OpenGL "software stack" often runs within the kernel for efficiency; but, yeah, that means any bugs in the code can cause computer crashes -- something that application bugs (as in Poser) cannot do for Windows XP or Mac OS X. That certainly is a risk. You'll generally be better off with the most recent generations of video card, simply because those are the ones likely to get the most attention and testing for any version of the driver. And Apple doesn't write the graphics drivers -- the card vendor does. It does appear to be true that ATi and NVidia have paid more attention to optimization on Windows, which is unfortunate. But while the difference in rendering speed is measurable on Doom 3, you're highly unlikely to be able to notice any difference in Poser previews.

Something to consider.. it's really hard to support new tech that hasn't stabilized yet. I'm all for adopting new tech when it's available, but I can't think of many people that have even begun implimenting opengl2 yet, and it's been around for a while now. I've heard horror stories already from people trying to use pci express, and how many things don't work as advertised yet, and how few motherboards have all the new tech they are all looking for together in one board. And it's really hard to test new software on hardware that has issues.

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2162208

I just upgraded to an ATI X600 pro 256 Meg graphics card from an Nvidia FX5200 128Meg card. The jury's still out as far as I'm concerned, I'm hoping that the ATI won't have issues with Poser 6 when it arrives hopefully next week! ;-)

Right now, the best 'proven' tech to get would be an Athlon 64 in the socket 939. Intel hasn't fielded a true 32-64 bit capable processor -yet- the Itanium uses a non-standard codeset, it doesn't count here), and those that 'they just have to turn it on' for are actually 40 bit processors with a bus multiplexer. Add to that the fact that all those folks who bought one of LGA-775 socket boards with the 915-925 chipset have just learned that they =can't= use the forthcoming dual core P4's: signal incompatability. You'll need one of the 400 series chipsets to use the dualies with. PCI-E has gotten caught up in a marketing nightmare; Nvidia has basically gobbled the idea up, and the focus has been on getting SLI working (not that there is any -reason- for tag team dual video cards; nothing on the drawing boards are close to saturating =one= PCI-E video port's bandwidth). Other parts of the spec have suffered due to the over emphasis on video and selling two cards to bleeding edgers. The only trouble I could see you having with that, fixer, is at the driver level. CL stated that Nvidia helped with the OpenGL implementation for P6...and we all know how kind and helpful Nvidia is about making sure their code samples work on a competitor's hardware... :P

I 'm actually kind of surprised at tech advances in the last year or so. My rig is 2 years old, and it's a p4 2.6 ghz system. Other then dual ram use, slightly faster MB speeds, and videocard advances, there really hasn't been any great speed increases since then. And I've always found I've needed a new system every 2 years, but I'm running all the latest games pretty well here.