I built an AMD 2800+ PC for the express purpose of budget 3d work, particularly with D|S. With a Radeon 9200, it's herky jerky when posing. I hear nVidia cards are better with D|S. But there's a SEA of choices. I have $75 - $100 to spend on a new nVidia card. Which one? I don't game. I run WinXP Pro. What features are not used by the D|S software? Which features are? I see specs on pipelines, memory bit width and other things gamers foam at the mouth about...but will these help D|S any? I have an AGP 8x slot on an ECS 754socket board. Don't care about noise/fan/fanless/whatever, I just need to get V3 et al posing smoothly, and open up the full rendering options (all 8 lights, cartoon, etc)

I am not sure what you mean by "herky-jerky". I have an Nvidia GeForce FX5500 with 256Mb Vram that seems to work fine on D|S, Poser and Bryce. - Yolanda

Herky Jerky is when you move V3's arm and the display won't update until it's halfway down thru the motion, and you either overshoot where you want it to go, or have to grab the arm again and move it some more. It's like flying blind. Moving the slider/dials around is even worse. I like to keep those closed, because it takes so darn long for the display to update upon body part selection... Orbit the camera in a scene, even with textures turned off, results in skipping and lags. THAT'S herky-jerky. :-) On my system, Poser has this same problem, despite being unaffected by the video card (P4 can't use OpenGL acceleration) The memory fix might be the solution on that... The FX5x00 series is loathed by gamers, but will it work good for D|S? "Good" meaning -- end the herky jerky, smooth out the posing of V3 and other complex meshes (conforming clothes, scenes, etc) Local computer store has an nVidia 256meg AGP for $29...so tempted to scoop it up...

I also have the FX5500 and it works quite well with D|S. Whatever card you get, maximize the onboard memory plus increase the RAM in your system as much as you can.

Message edited on: 11/28/2005 19:08

From your description of the problem, a new video card may not be the solution, especially since you have the same problem with Poser. It may be a system/memory timing problem which you might need a professional to answer. I have not heard good things about XP or AMD, and my own system is Win2000 with Intel x686. Somebody has written some benchmark tests for poser, I think maybe Dr. Geep, that mught give you a start on narrowing down the problem.

Not a RAdeon, but a built-in SiS chipset that borrows from main mem. Sorry for the confusion. I had my Mac on the brain -- it has the R9200 and is a slug with OpenGL. Shared mem video slows everything down, no matter how big a CPU you have. So I"m getting a 5x00 series nV tomorrow. I"ll be sure to post my experiences with it.

Message edited on: 11/28/2005 19:47

The SiS chipset is the problem. You're lucky to even get Studio to open with many integrated graphics chips. And yes I know I'm not telling you anything you haven't figured out for yourself. I'm just responding so I can have an excuse to say, "AMD makes the finest CPUs on the planet!" Thank you and good night.

I use an FX5200, and it seems just fine, one thing to remember is dont use 'toon shading' in the preview window, seems to slow the whole thing right down alarmingly, dress, morph n pose in texture shaded, then turn on toon if you must.