Attached Link: Cynthia's Bryce Gallery

I'm currently running on a Voodoo 3 3000. I'm looking for a reasonably priced 64Meg AGP card to replace it - and I thought I'd check and see what the experts use. :) I run bryce and 3d Studio max mainly - and I play plenty of games. Any recommendations y'all could provide will be much appreciated. Thanks! Cynthia aka Aerilion

Unfortunately it has nothing for Bryce, which runs at bus speed. I have rage 128 in my Mac G4. Great for games.

wait... bus speed? bryce won't take advantage of video RAM at all? well that's the saddest thing I've ever heard.... but I suppose that's why I saw a render time increase when I got my new 200 MHz bus motherboard. is this strictly a function (non-function) of bryce? I know 3dstudio max likes 64M of VRAM at the minimum... If you have time could you explain this to me? I love bryce, and will probably always use it (if Corel doesn't screw it up next version), and I'd like to know how to maximize my bryce performance. thanks for your help, C

The only thing I have seen that helps Bryce with render time and working on screen seems to be Proc speed and memory. I was working on a AMD k62 450 with 256megs and went to a Celeron 533 with 256megs. The one picture I used as a test went from 47 mins 38seconds to 14 mins 9 seconds. I now have gone to a 800 PIII with 768 megs, and only went down to 9 mins 11 seconds. So I pulled the memory out down to 256 and no change to mention in time. Now I overclocked it to 1 gig and added the memory back in, went down about 30 seconds in render time. I think a lot has to do with how many calculations your CPU can handle and at a certain point I don't think memory has anythng to do with it anymore. I am currently running a new test between my 1gig PIII and an Athlon 1.2 gig with 256 megs. I will if you are interested post the results. That is my experience hope it helps you a little.. Oh by the way I was running a Voodoo 3 3000 on the AMD and went to a Elsa Geforce 2 MX when I made the change to the Celeron.

I have a 64 mb Voodoo 5500 in my athlon 900 and it makes no difference in render speed I,m afraid.You need a fast CPU with a strong floating point calcultation and fast memory bus speed (133 mhz) to really improve your render times on the same scene.

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yes please post your results, if you would. thanks for the post, now it's beginning to make sense. I suppose I'll save my cash and dump it into memory instead. thanks again for 'splaining that to me. :) I like your name, I just finished a render called Lifebringer. :)

Although nothing will speed up Bryce render times except processor/memory speed and efficiency, it is possible to speed up the work window redraw with a good video card. A card with good 2D performance will aid the normal 'wire' view, though not greatly. A card with good OpenGL performance can dramatically speed up redraw in that mode of work window operation, especially under WindowsNT. Direct3D mode can be sped up too, but not as significantly, in my experience. Once again, it's down to processor/memory speed to improve Bryce's proprietary 'Sree3D' mode. Outside of WindowsNT, one of the latest and most powerful Geforce2 cards will likely be as good as anything for Bryce; and, of course, be as good as it gets for your games. :-)

If you play alot of 3D game GeForce2 Ultra would be awesome if you can aford it. You could also pick up a profesional graphics card. Check out www.3dlabs.com The oxygen cards would be great for your 3d art (especialy MAX) but would suck for games (they have a tex fill rate of about 200 Mtxl a GeForce 2 will put out about 2000). If I had enough money I would get both but I dont and I wouldnt suspect you do either. If you are a hardcore gamer GeForce 2 ultra is your ticket.

I am gonna start a new Post for this.. Anyone looking to do a good test in real world application email me and I will get you the file to render.. Takes about 30mins to a few hours depending on your machine.. Doesn't matter how fast or slow your machine is all we want is real world specs and then we will post them.. The new Post will be called "Take the Challenge" Thanks and see you there.

3D Oxygen cards rock for Graphics, Art and CAD programs but, as said before they BLOW chunks when it comes to games. Some of my favorites have been rendered unplayable. Rob