I'm planning on getting a new machine. I'm getting an AMD CPU. The question I have is should I get an FX-57 or Dual Core 4800+. I also plan on getting nVidia 7800 GTX video cards.

Almost all the benchmarks show that for pure video gaming that the FX-57/nVidia combo is the best. (The GPU does most of the work) However, for multi-tasking and CPU intensive chores the Dual Core/nVidia combo is better.

The underlying question is, will POSER primarily use the CPU to render, or will it use the GPUs on the videocards to do the rendering?

Poser uses the CPU to render only. So get the fastest CPU and a big bunch or RAM for maximum Poser speed. :] Fish

I'd go with the dual core 4800+ (I will be soon as well). I've already got an old dual cpu Athlon MP system and it does help - as both Poser and Windows are both system hogs having two cpus/cores means that you can assign Poser to one of them and let Windows do whatever it needs on the other.

dont bother with the nVidia 7800 GTX video cards, poser dont/will not need/use it. save the money. ;)

"dont bother with the nVidia 7800 GTX video cards, poser dont/will not need/use it. save the money. ;)" Sorry, as far as I know Poser 6 uses OpenGL, so I would disagree...and purchase the best card you can afford after CPU and memory. OpenGL offers a lot more than any software based display API; If nothing else a much more speedier display when creating in the viewports, so a quality graphics card is an important consideration. For rendering the main thing IS CPU....the speedier the better. As anastasis20 said, Poser isn't multi-threaded, but having another thread will help with multi-tasking. Cheers

sorry me bad,still thinking with poser5 mind :)

Thanks, it's going to be a few months before I'm able to get the new system, so I've got some time yet. Thanks for all the input.