I'm looking to upgrade my video card to assist in faster rendering and all around speed. I am looking for cards preferably around or under $100. My computer is 1.8 G hard drive with 256K DDR. Windows XP. It currently has a 3D S3 Graphics card with a pro Savage 8" available AGP slot. I frequently get the "Windows is low on memory" message and am hoping this will help. Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Video cards are irrelevant for Poser's rendering speed. The only thing to consider if you have P6 is a card with OpenGL support. 256K? Surely you mean 256GB. Either way, it's not enough. Get at least 512MB in your machine. I can't imagine you have a 1.8GB HD, either. I'd seriously recommend at least 100GB exclusively for Poser.

I have an Nvidea GeForce FX 5200 that seems to work great for me. You can probably up pick something similar at CompUSA, that's where I bought mine. I think it cost around $70. Also Like Sams says, you might want to get a bigger hard drive. I have a 160 GB internal and a 250 GB external drive. And also more memory, like 1 GB. You didn't say what kind of processor you have. That is also important. I have a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4. With that I get pretty good rendering speeds.

I don't use Poser 6. I do have Poser PP and Poser 5 and they do better than most people I hear complaining about speed. Average render time is between 7-10 minutes. I always use the draft because in my opinion, there is not that much difference between the two firefly engine speeds. I was just hoping to improve a little Particularly with the memory issues. My 1.8 Gigahertz works very well at this time. I may have confused you when I said gig abyte instead of gigahertz. My hard drive id 80 gigabytes. I was told by my son that a new video card would help with the memory issue.

Sam's right. Your money would be much better spent on more RAM and a larger hard drive than on a video card.

Oh, if you don't have Poser 6 then the video card is irrelevant. If you can see a picture at all on the screen then it will work for PP or Poser 5.

If you don't have Poser 6, a new video card won't help at all. PP and P5 don't use the video card memory to render at all. (Very old program.) Poser 6 uses the video card for OpenGL preview, but obviously, you don't have to worry about that.

First of all, get more memory. Upgrade to at least 512 MB, preferably to 768 MB or 1 GB. 1.8 Ghz is not extremely fast nowadays, but it's still a very decent machine. Don't spend a dime on a graphics card for Poser. Only P6 uses OpenGL. P5 and PP work equally fast (or slow) on a Geforce6800Ultra with 256MB and a RivaTNT2 with 16MB. 80 GB disk is decent, but not overly much. If you still have some money after upgrading your memory, you might want to add a big disk, 160 GB or more.

Thanks. I was a little doubtful that the video card would improve render speed, that was why I thought I would pose the question. More memory sounds to be the answer. As I said, I have a pretty quick render speed, but wouldn't turn down more. I imagine I'd ultimately have to buy a faster machine in order to facilitate more speed. The help is much appreciated.

Another tip: increase the minimum page file size. "Windows is low on memory" means that Windows has to expand the swapfile during your render. That'll slow the render down considerably - if it doesn't crash completely.
With 256 MB I'd set the minimum page file size to 768 MB or 1 GB. That will get rid of those "low on memory" messages and your render speed will increase.
Still, adding RAM is a VERY good idea. But change the page file size too. Edited to add: if you add RAM, I'd recommend buying two identical DDR400 modules of 512 MB. When you upgrade to a new machine, you can take those modules out of your "old" machine and put them both in the new one - it will almost definitely be a dual-channel machine.

Message edited on: 07/29/2005 19:28

Also, depending on Ram costs, you might find a new machine is just slightly higher in price. I just saw a $400 system running 3.2 ghz (almost 3 times faster then your system, with windows xp, 512 meg ram ($50 option to double that). You could add your current hard drive to it, and that would also double your hd space as well. I was considering upgrading my rig, but with price drops the last year, I may just end up buying a new system.