Hi, i have winXp and only 512 RAM, Poser 6 is very slow. Which other Sytem works with Poser 6 and eats not so much RAM as Windows XP? I have heart about BeOS, but i'm not sure if Poser 6 is working on this.

I would seriously upgrade your ram to 2gigs. The improvement would be well noticed. Sorry, I can't answer your direct question.

crucial.com

Yes, I have to agree with Pollee. Changing your OS probably won't make any difference. In fact, P6 might not even work. Upgrading your RAM is about the only way to improve performance. And 2G is a good idea for P6. Sometimes, even that's not enough.

Attached Link: http://www.yellowtab.com/

Poser 6 only runs "natively" on Windows and MacOSX. Beos, AmigaOS, flavored Linux/Unix OSs, MacOS 9, MSDOS may have ways to emulate Windows (Wine), but that software layer will make Jupiter's orbit appear blazingly fast. ;) A third concurrence: upgrade your memory. What CPU/FSB are you using?

Hi and thx for the answers, i thin whould be the best ill upgrade my RAM :D I have a AMD Athlon 64 3000+

For some reason, Poser 5 had issues with one of the WinXP SR's so I was really suprised when Poser 6 worked with XP. I use Win2000 with great results. I've got 512 RAM and I have no slow downs at all. My computer has the AMD 64 bit 2800+. I've got very fast renders and it took me nearly 2 weeks to finally get the "memory bug" that others have mentioned on these boards.

Message edited on: 04/13/2005 16:38

I'm puzzled.. I see all these "get massive amounts of ram!" answers again and again. well.. I'm running on 512mb of PC133 ram. old, slow and according to the "wisdom" poser 6 should not work. well it does. it FLIES. can anyone explain the seeming paradox? I agree that 2gig's is nice.. but why is it such a sudden requirement?

but why is it such a sudden requirement?

Once again -- it depends upon what you want to do with your 3D software.

So long as you don't need/desire to produce complex scenes, then 512M might do the job for you. If so, then that's great.

No one in their "wisdom" has made the assertion that P6 won't run under 512M. But a number of individuals have pointed out the fact that a lower amount of RAM places additional restrictions on what you can do with the program.

Windows 2000 is a little bit less resource-intensive than WinXP. But if you disable all XP bells and whistles, the difference is very small. You'll be able to free a dozen MB, not much more. And some of the newer hardware doesn't work with Win2000! About memory, I find an AMD64 3000+ with "only" 512 MB RAM a strange, unbalanced configuration. It's a fast processor, you want to feed it data to work with, so you want RAM! Upgrade to at least 1 GB, not only Poser will love it. By the way, set your minimum page file size pretty high, I'd recommend at least 1.5 GB. If Windows has to adjust page file size during a Poser action, Poser will not only slow down, there's a good chance it'll crash. It might be interesting to monitor commit charge using Task Manager while working in P6. If the commit charge exceeds physical RAM, your system has to do a lot of physical swapping to disk, slowing down the system to a crawl. Additional RAM then is the only way to speed it up.

I have to agree that more RAM may not always be the answer. I have an Athlon 2600 XP system with 1.5GB of SDRAM, an Athlon 1.4 GHz system with 1GB of SDRAM, an eMachine with a 2.66 GHz Celeron and 1GB of DDR RAM (really my wife's), and a Toshiba Laptop with an Intel based 1.6 Ghz processor and 512MB of laptop (who knows, the laptop is over two years old) RAM. Although all of the desktop systems render faster, the laptop can render larger scenes in both Poser 4, Poser 5, and Vue 4.2. In fact, the Athlon 2600 is the fastest, followed closely by the eMachine, and the Athlon 1.4Ghz takes a distant third, just a touch faster than the laptop. But when the complexity of the scene is a concern, the laptop will render larger scenes than any of the desktops without locking up. My 'Beach Party' 58 Faerie scene in the gallery was rendered on the laptop using Vue. It took 8 days to render, but kept chugging along. The faster Athlon and the eMachine locked up sometime during the first night. They completely quit responding, and had to be rebooted. I did leave the Athlon running an extra day, but Vue showed no progress, and the drive light never flashed. Also, the cursor never responded. My 29 faerie scene was created in Poser 4 as two PZ3 files on the Toshiba. There were 15 faeries in one file and 14 faeries in the other file. That was all the Toshiba could handle in Poser 4, before getting too slow to bear. I started the scene on the Athlon 2600 system but as always, I could only get about 8 to 10 characters into Poser before that system got too slow. The files were imported into Vue 4 to render, on the Toshiba. So I guess the long moral is that RAM is not all that counts. Also, each system has a fixed 2GB swap file created after defragmentation. Sorry for the long boring post, but I do not have a life. ;-)

One more thing. All systems are running Windows XP.

"Once again -- it depends upon what you want to do with your 3D software." produce complex steampunk machines with human figures actually ;) when I'm in tS, I rarely hit max mem usage and thats with scenes far more complex than most do in Poser, (poser equv - 10 V3's plus textures)... in Poser I've done scenes with 4 or 5 figures easily. the secret? balance the scene. if you have a figure thats at a distance, do you need that to be a V3/M3? does that figure need 4096x4096 textures? does it even need hair? = nope, since you won't see it! use low rez, have a texure set setup for that. say 1024x1024. looks like crap? who cares. it's not the main part of the scene, it's background. midrange allow yourself more detail say texture ranges of 2048, mid range figure rez. the main figures in the foreground? thats where you use your V3/M3's with the massively detailed textures etc. as to speed. get over it. this is 3D. learn patience. hell the first render I ever did took 72 hours! here's the news kids. Raytracing, Hair, IBL, etc etc etc cost CPU time = Time Rendering. the more you add the more timecost it's going to be. adding ram or a faster CPU will help but the bottom line is it will take time whatever.

I keep seeing people posting that some hardware won't work with Win 2000. Could you guys give some hardware specs or names or components that won't work with Win 2000 cause I've yet to find anything that won't run on my machine which uses Win 2000. Also, remember a while back, the discussion of Jim Burton's benchmark image? Well, in that whole thread, my computer was the second fastest at rendering that image...but my computer also had the least amount of RAM out of just about all the machines that were tested.

It took 8 days to render

You are a more patient man than I am, my friend.

Sorry for the long boring post, but I do not have a life.

Didn't bore me at all. I found it to be both interesting and informative.

No one is saying, or has said that RAM is the end-all and be-all of this process.

But when it comes to 3D applications -- upgrading your PC with additional RAM gives you more bang for your buck than any other item that you can name.

That is, without switching out your motherboard......or buying a new system.

*in Poser I've done scenes with 4 or 5 figures easily. the secret? balance the scene.

if you have a figure thats at a distance, do you need that to be a V3/M3? does that figure need 4096x4096 textures? does it even need hair? = nope, since you won't see it! use low rez, have a texure set setup for that. say 1024x1024. looks like crap? who cares. it's not the main part of the scene, it's background.

midrange allow yourself more detail say texture ranges of 2048, mid range figure rez.

the main figures in the foreground? thats where you use your V3/M3's with the massively detailed textures etc.*

This is all good advice -- unless if you happen to want all 5 figures in the foreground, and at high res. Plus detailed hair and clothing for all of them. Plus numerous props in the scene. Plus a highly textured room......or buildings.......or plants........or whatever.

After a time, a copious amount of RAM is the best answer. Perhaps the only answer.

Especially when we are talking about Poser.

I've never worked in tS, but I strongly suspect that it's a bit more efficient in terms of memory management than another program that we all know and love.........

Well, in that whole thread, my computer was the second fastest at rendering that image...but my computer also had the least amount of RAM out of just about all the machines that were tested.

RAM doesn't necessarily affect speed (although it can). What it primarily affects is volume.

Let's cut to the chase -- 2G of RAM beats 512M, and 4G of RAM beats 2G.......

.........as has already been said: depending upon what you want to do.

And the capabilities/limitations of your software.

The limitations of the software -- that's always important to remember. Especially these days.

One thing that strikes me about all of these threads about how well Poser performs or even if it runs, is that Poser (especially the newer versions) seems to be very sensitive to it's hardware/software environment. People with semmingly nearly identical systems get wildly different results. It seems to me that the only way of possibly beginning to sort it all out is to collect standardized data and analyse it. Someone (should be CL) needs to collect the data from Windows System Info or some other little utility and put it in a database. Over time, some answers should emerge. If you're looking at performance, you need a standard P6 test scene too of course. As Xenophonz points out, expectations are a huge factor. I marvel at the patience of those who do multi-day renders and laugh at those whe are disappointed that Poser won't whip out their 100 fully armored Vicky battle scene at the speed of ILM's renderfarm.

Today for the first time, I got that bug thing but I was alerted by WindowsXP telling me the virtual memory was too low and that it would increase it so my applications might run slower while it does that. Well my applications didn't go slower, they stopped. BUT after Windows had finished its job, Poser 6 continued rendering what it was rendering. I don't understand the RAM and CPU and other things like that. I bought my computer last October and it is a hp pavilion a730n. It has 530 Intel Pentium 4 Processor 512MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM memory 200GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive Intel Graphics Media Accelerator with up to 128MB shared video memory Processor speed 3.00GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 800MHz Front Side Bus Now the only thing I understand in all that is that I have a hard disk of 200GB. ;o) So do you think I should add more RAM (whatever that is)? Thanks. France

So do you think I should add more RAM (whatever that is)?

It wouldn't hurt.

Although it sounds like you've been using P6 for a while without any problems.....until today.

The glitch could happen again. Additional RAM might prevent it.

But when it comes to PC's.......one cannot guarantee results. The machines tend to have a mind of their own.

Mine cooperates with me. Most of the time.

Of course, now that I've said that............

Mine cooperates with me. Most of the time. Of course, now that I've said that............ lolll Yes, I know what you mean. I won't say it then. But today I had 3 other applications open plus my browser and I was chatting on Yahoo Messenger while P6 rendered. ;o) I'll ask my son-in-law to see to that RAM thing. Thanks.

"Intel Graphics Media Accelerator with up to 128MB shared video memory" One thing to note, the "shared" part means that your video is sharing your main memory. Usually, this is a system with the video buitl ino the main circuit board (motherboard). So, you video can be taking up memory that your applications could be using. If you plan on keeping the system for a while, you might look into getting a dedicated video card as well as more memory. The memory on the video card would also be faster, possibly speeding up your graphics display operations.

Francemi, that situation you ran into is not a Poser or Windows bug. You just ran out of available RAM and Windows had to make more room by expanding your pagefile. Apparently Poser has been improved, in previous versions this situation would have invariably meant a Poser crash. Your other apps? Well, they should resume working after Windows finished expanding the pagefile, probably slower than before since they have to be swapped in from disk. This situation can be prevented by setting your minimum pagefile size to a decent amount, say 3x physical RAM. Takes up a few gigs of disk space, but with 200 GB, disk space is plenty.

Kristta: Windows 2000 Pro refused to install on my Acer Aspire 1700C portable. Windowx XP Pro installed fine. I couldn't get the NIC on a HP/Compaq NX9010 to work with Windows 2000. It worked right out of the box with XP. Seems that mostly laptop/portable components don't like Win2000.

svdl, thank you. I don't use laptops at all (with kids, laptops are dangerous as in the children want to play with them while taking a bath or such and it just doesn't work out). Laptops tend to be a lot pickier and harder to deal with. My husband and I build and work primarily on desk top systems and have not run into any problems. XP on the desktop actually refused to install some of the kids games and that is when I decided we'd stick with Win2000. Personally, as far as all the memory (RAM) debates go, I'd wait until CL develops a fix for the P6 Memory Bug before I did any upgarding or anything else. It seems to not really matter what you are running or how much RAM you have...you still catch the bug once in a while.

It seems to not really matter what you are running or how much RAM you have...you still catch the bug once in a while. While increasing your RAM doesn't make the bug go away, it does help to lessen its effect. At least it did in my case.

I have not run into the corrupted file problem yet which seems to be the one thing that is upsetting people the most. The only adjustment I've had to make on any render so far was a reduction in bucket size from 64 to 50. Wasn't that big of a deal and it still rendered in about 50 seconds.