I want to get Poser 6 pretty soon but also a new PC because mine is still 98SE. And I also get no end of different reviews for many graphics cards. Can anyone recommend the best PC system set-up (graphic card, sound card, etc.) for Poser 6 based on your experience? Thanks. st.

stoke, graphic card and sound card are the two LEAST important elements to a great Poser Rig. What is important IMO: Most expensive AMD chip you can afford, try to get one with 1024 L2 Cache instead of 512 L2 cache. Min 1 Gig RAM, better 2 Gig RAM or more. FAST Hard drive, like a 10,000 RPM Raptor, or two of them in RAID-0 Clean install. Suggest you go to RDNA and search for "Five Things" post. Also suggest you search in Poser Technical forum for "Optimal Poser Rig" Now that all having been said, the Video Card is also important, starting with Poser 6. Others I am sure will chime in on that. My 2 Cents opinion. ::::: Opera :::::

AMD chips do seem to work quite well with P6.

If you are looking to change your SW, then check out the PowerMac Dual G5's with the new 64bit OSX 4 (Tiger). Grrrr... It's worth a look. That would be my "Optimal Poser Rig".

One caution on the Mac: The Mac edition of Poser still does not have complete Python Script support. Of course, that hasn't stopped ME from using Poser with a Mac, but if Python Script is important to you, you may want to stick with a PC. I'll probably be upgrading to a Power Mac G5 within a year... ^_^

Much as I like Win98SE, it doesn't handle over 512mb RAM, and isn't real poser friendly. Grab a copy of Win2k Professional, or if you absolutely MUST have the latest crap and integrated DRM, WinXP pro. Please note that the only thing you can't do on Win2k that you can do on XP is use an Intel Hyperthreading processor to it's fullest potential. 1 gig+ RAM. No less. For drives, I suggest getting 2; put win2k and it's swap on one, install all your poser stuff and nothing else on the second; this allows you to make backups easier, and even add some portability to your poser files. a 10gb or better drive would be fine for the poser drive. even better, get 3 10gb drives, and make them into a RAID5 rig, you'll never lose anything to a crash (and have about 20gb of space to play with). Um, I haven't hear or seen anything that says your video card matters any, but i suppose P6 COULD make use of the GPU in some way and they just aren't advertising it? regardless, it doesn't matter in p4 or p5. BTW, I'm a MCSE. Speaking as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, XP Sucks.

Get a pc with WinXP Home, AMD Athlon 2400+ (2Ghz), 1Gb Ram, Radeon 9600 Pro 256Mb, 266fsb..... and Poser 6 will run like a smooth running high speed train!

OK...it looks like AMD and no less than 1G of RAM is the way to go...so far But it also looks like that XP isn't as good as 2K, and then I hear otherwise. XP is the most popular according to the stats on pcpitstop.com. Other opinions about this? (please keep the ego-fighting to a minimum) st.

Of course XP is more popular than Win2K, as most major PC vendors are induced to sell only with current versions of the OS - i.e XP - by guess who? XP does have a few features not available in Win2k as mentioned, but it also has a lot of floss that isn't really needed, in the same way that ME was just 98 burdened with extra stuff, and worse for it. More code equals more to go wrong, and more potential exploits to be exploited. Win2K was not ever very popular with home users, because pre-XP most home users where still content to use products from the 98/98SE/ME series.

Win2K - provided that you never install IE6 or later versions of WMP - will give you a lot less security traps than XP. But you will not benefit from security fixes from Micro$oft for much longer. You can also get much of the performance back from XP by disabling all the XP-specific ui flotsam, and using the old interface. But you will have to deal with the activation code of XP, and the DRM (digital rights management - as in, managing the digital rights of others on your computer) built into XP (and later versions of WMP for all versions of Windows).

So like most things, it really boils down to personal preference, and what's important to you in the trade off of features in the OS versus control over your system from a user rights perspective. You'll be able to make either work more than well enough to run Poser - well, as well as any copy of Windows can be with its "attractiveness" to viruses, trojans, spyware, et al.

That's a lot of information, layingback. Here's my take. I am NOT tech oriented, just a user. I got XP Pro. I did a fresh install. I made sure SR2 was in place. I turned on the firewall, I always say "yes" when auto updater tells me there is a new patch, and I run Virus Protection as well as SpyBot Innoculation. No worries. No problems. VERY fast. No infections. No popups. No trouble with IE. Poser is happy. I am happy. ::::: Opera :::::

BTW, opera I can't find those posts here or RDNA (which forum?) Can you give me the links?

Message edited on: 04/28/2005 15:02

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2077843 http://www.runtimedna.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=72272

With Poser 6, the graphics card also becomes an interesting piece of equipment. Be sure to grab one that has good OpenGL support. nVidia tends to be better with OpenGL than ATI. The best are the Quadra line cards - but they're also pretty expensive.

About the OS: Some new hardware features are not supported by Win2k, sometimes to the point that it won't install. Case in point: Win2K does not install on an Acer Aspire 1700 portable. It needs XP to run. The newest CPUs (both Intel and AMD) also have a hardware feature to prevent some virus nastiness: the NX bit. WinXP SP2 supports this hardware feature, older Windows versions do not. I'd say go for an Athlon64 system, socket 939. Or maybe wait a few months and then go for an Athlon64 dual core system - those CPUs are due in September.

I just wrote a giant post on this and it apparently died somewhere.
Anyway, to recap in a few hundred less words:
the NX bit keeps a lot of software from working: Microsoft page on this is at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=884130&product=windowsxpsp2

The Aspire 1700 series will run on Win2k; acer just doesn't support it, and the drivers they provide are pure XP. all the apsire hardware has Win2k drivers, they just aren't available from acer.

Um... the aspire also has a hyperthreading intel processor. Win2k doesn't support hyperthreading (it will run, just not with hyperthreading). get a AMD CPU and it's not an issue.

Xp is to Win2k what WinME was to Win98se.
Note I'm not saying XP is buggy, I'm just saying it sucks in comparison to Win2k.

RealDeal: The big hurdle for W2K that I see in the future is the dual core AMD 64 chips. Will they be able to run as anything more than single core systems? Hope so, 'cos AMD/W2K still seems to result a way more efficient system than XP/Intel...