Hey gang, just about to purchase a new system...I've got roughly $2,000 to spend and hope some Poser power-users might comment on my proposed specs or any other missing matters. I'm leaning toward a major vendor for peace of mind (which probably means either a Dell XPS 400 or an HP 4300 Series Workstation...and the multi-year support charge). CPU: Any 2.8+ GHz processor...if the Dell, probably an Intel dual core model (I know, Poser won't use it, but I may run Maya on this system later). I'm told the most important factor here is to confirm L2 Cache is included here, right? RAM: 2 Gigs of Dual Channel SDRAM at 533MHz. Is this the best type of RAM? OS: XP Pro (again, anticipating Maya) Harddrive(s): Lots of confusing choices here... 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache, or DataSafe 160GB (Includes main hard drive plus a hidden reserve hard drive), or 320GB Performance RAID 0 (2 x 160GB SATA HDDs). Regarding these harddrive configs, I guess "Serial ATA" and "SATA" are the same? I'm only considering the latter RAID option because I hear Poser likes its own drive. Well, I think those are my main concerns! Getting the right CPU, RAM and Harddrive configuration...any suggestions or other considerations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Poser loves large L2 cache. Check. ::::: Opera :::::

XP Pro - good choice. Been running it since it was released ... little problems. On the hard drive - go BIG! Poser does eat virtual memory like you would not believe. Get the most memory you can get ... its always better to have too much then too little.

Oh, and get a burner ... DVD discs are expensive but you can hold a lot more info (great for keeping back ups of models to keep hard drive space free)

Message edited on: 12/30/2005 11:09

One thing you seem to be overlooking is fans, Lots of fans!!! Both case and CPU. If you can afford them go for the 10,000rpm Sata drives. They are expensive. I'd up the CPU to 3 gig. RAM looks good. Consider the power supply too. 450W is a good choice. Lastly there is the buss speed of the Motherboard itself. Get the fastest that is compatable with the CPU, RAM and the hard drives. No sense getting fast components and not being able to communicate with each other fast enough. Clean all fans at least every two weeks, more often if you live, like I do, in a dusty environment.

Since you're going for a brand, you won't get the best Poser CPU (AMD Athlon64). For $2000, I built my newest rig around an Athlon64x2 4400+, 4 GB Kingston HyperX DDR400 Dual Channel, Geforce 7800 GTX, 2x73 GB 10,000 RPM SATA (no RAID), Arctic Freezer CPU fan, a good PSU and some extra case fans. Blows any Intel baced rig out of the water. Again, Poser will not use the second core. But Vue (and Maya) will. A test with Vue revealed that the dual core machine is indeed twice as fast when rendering compared to the single core variety (Athlon64 3500+, and there's nothing slow about that CPU either!). As a home user I NEVER buy brand computers. Way too expensive. But last week I purchased 20 Dell workstations plus a server for my job, including 3 yrs on site service (8 hours). Brand computers are good for large IT envirnoments, where you really need consistency among the machines, and wehre you really need the support a brand can deliver. For home users, brand computers are way, way too expensive.

hmmm...excellent info all...thanks!!! Nickedshield: fans and power supplies...I did not see that level of component option on the Dell or HP sites. Are you referring to 3rd party accessories that I could look into upgrading later? I'd also sure like the 10K drive and 3MHz options, but those top-o-the-line bits seem to push me past the $2,000 mark :( Svdl: 1st off, you're Freestuff contributions (especially the dynamic clothing) are really, really cool. 2nd, did you build this monster rig yourself, or can I order one like it (if so, where)? Also, a couple clarifications please: "Athlon64x2 4400+" is a dual-core processor, right? Sounds like every component of your rig is custom integrated (by you)...so if you experience tech difficulties, you're not likely to have an "on-site service" option, right? Maybe this is a big trade off of going for a brand box? Finally, how does your 2 drive (73GB each) jibe with Kathym's comment regarding Poser's hunger for large drives (say one 250GB drive)? Thanks Again All, pdog

Yup, built the rig myself. Teaching computer hardware, operating systems and software is my job, so being my own "on-site service" is not a real problem. The main disadvantage is that I don't have a stock of mainboards, memory modules, hard drives etc, but I haven't encountered an issue yet that I couldn't solve. A good relationship with the local computer store helps too. Alright, some specs. The mainboard is a MSI K8N SLI Platinum, based on an nForce4 chipset. A good mainboard is essential. Brands like Asrock are cheaper, but less stable, I don't recommend such a brand. MSI, Asus, Abit and Gigabyte are all good. I have a slight preference for MSI, since they bundle the board with a really good manual. The Athlon64x2 family consists of five CPUs, the 3900, 4200, 4400, 4600 and 4800. The higher the number, the faster (and more expensive) the CPU. The 4200 and 4600 have 512 kB L2 cache per core, the 4400 and 4800 have 1 MB per core. I don't know about the 3900, but I think it's 512 kB per core. Since a large L2 cache is very beneficial to Poser, the 4400 and 4800 are the best CPUs. The 4800 is too expensive (around $900), the 4400 is only slightly slower, and costs about $500. The case is a Casetec. Advice: if you're going to build your own rig, buy a decent case. The $30 cases just don't cut it. Good brands are Zalman, Antec, Chieftec, Casetec, Lian-Li. Again, not the cheapest, but if you're going to build a high-end rig, you also want a good case. Power supply unit: get yourself a GOOD one. The simple PSUs by brands like Sweex and Q-tec are cheap, but the output isn't really stable and they tend to break down under heavy load. Rendering in Poser is heavy load! I use Fortron PSUs, which are silent and stable. Papst is also silent and robust, so is Zalman. Make sure the PSU can deliver at least 400W. The disks are Western Digital Raptors. Expensive but very fast. Those two 73 GB disks are my working disks, I keep my downloads on another machine with much more disk space (400 GB total). Those 2x73 GB are more than enough for my working stuff. Finished scenes are moved off to my storage machine. I never run into space problems (and my Vue scenes are quite complex, each scene has its own working directory at about 2 GB). Graphics card: nVidia. A nice fast one, I'd recommend a 7800. Or you might go for a nVidia QuadroFX, a 1400 or 4400/4500. Expensive, but optimized for 3D modeling. Maya will love it. Somewhat more expensive (starting at around $800) are the 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm cards. THE best for 3D modeling, but hard to come by. You don't have to handle the screwdrives yourself, by the way. A decent computer shop will build the rig for you at a small charge (around $50). Then you'll also have a warranty, probably something like 6 months carry-in. At some computer shops you can purchase an extended warranty and on-site service, but that might be quite pricey. Good luck!

re: large drive. While it may be true that Poser eats HD, its not because of virtual memory; it's about the size of your runtime if you purchase a lot of items. Also, If you are an animator, it consumes a lot of space because of incremental saves of pz3s with dynamic subfiles plus folders of png image sequences. There is an upper limit to the virtual memory swap file of 4096MB or something like that. However, FAST HD is another matter, and it counts big time. I have dual Raptor 35 Gigs giving me 70 Gig in RAID-0 array. This is very fast. From desktop double-click on the Poser6 icon, 8 seconds until completely launched into my default startup. 70 Gig might seem small, but it is just my 'current workspace." I shuttle older projects to a firewire external, and back that up with DVDs, stored offsite. And yes, fans. I have a Zelman cooler on the CPU, two case fans, and individual fans to cool each Raptor. I call this rig "Sikorski". ::::: Opera :::::

pdog, Looks like your question was answerd. Just letting you know I wasn't ignoring you.

If you go with Dell, price the computer through the small business choices as well as the consumer. I just got almost the same machine you are looking at, and it was $400 cheaper through the small business side than through the consumer side - who knows why. The financing isn't as good, but there is a real cost savings. For some strange reason, the 24" monitor from Dell (which is worth every penny for Poser - one of the best things you can get) was much cheaper through the office side.

Thanks all again...I keep getting great tips! I am going to focus on the core system without a pricey graphics card so as to run Poser on it for the first 6 months whilst I save for the card (then migrate Maya onto this sytem). I think I have most of the info I need to dive in, but am printing all this great info and may ping y'all back when I get it (next few weeks) and start thinking about nominal fortifications (those fans and power-supplies everyone seems so fixated upon ;) Thanks Again, michael

I also have the Dell Ultra Sharp 24" monitor and it rocks big time for Poser and After Effects. Hang with it --- their bottom line price is around $849. The fans are not fancy extraw! They are sine qua non. They are core. They are deal killers. They are salt. Buy them. ::::: Opera :::::

A good PSU is no fancy extra either. A cheap PSU will fail on you, within a couple of months, possibly frying some essential components. Don't take the risk. Buy a good one to start with.

Steve,sidewise topic: At the top, in your opinion, are the Intel chips temporarily (or permanently) ahead of AMD? I think I saw you post something like that recently, and was pretty suprised. And...is it too early to go to XP 64? ::::: Opera :::::

The Intel dual cores are cheaper than the AMD dual cores. I'm fairly sure the AMDs are faster though. Each AMD core has its own FSB800 lane to main memory, while the Intels still rely on a single northbridge. Which means shared memory access, and less speed. An Athlon64x2 4400 is two Athlon64 3500+ chips in a single core. Both cores run at 2200 MHz. The Athlon64x2 4400 rendered a test Vue scene slightly more than twice as fast as the Athlon64 3500+. Except for the CPU the machines were identical. The 3500+ performs roughly equal to a P4 at 3.5 GHz, while the fastest dual core P4 D that I've seen runs at 3.2 GHz. So AMD still has the lead. As for hyperthreading: AMD doesn't do hyperthreading. Actually, that's a good thing. Hyperthreading has been hyped quite a bit by Intel, but some recent articles (can't find the links, however) showed that hyperthreading can even slow down applications. The P4 dual core chips don't do hyperthreading either. XP64: I tried it a couple of months ago, the 120 day trial version. At the time hardware support was rather marginal. nVidia chipsets and graphics cards are supported out of the box, ATI graphics cards and VIA chipsets were not supported at the time. Some codecs were missing. Quicktime didn't have a 64bit version yet (don't know if they have corrected this yet). Quite a few products - even from MS themselves - have limited functionality under XP64. I expect that to change, but I don't know when. Poser and Vue both ran smoothly under XP64 - except for the codec problems. Performance was roughly equal to running under XP Pro. Alas, neither Poser nor Vue can make use of the extended address space of XP64. Right now it seems to be better to stick to XP Pro. But as soon as Vue 5 Infinite has a 64bit version I'll upgrade to XP64.

Thanks for the extensive post. I am watching developments but still a few months short of my next CPU purchase.

Okay then...thanks again all for your informative posts. I have recieved my new uter...am running it as shipped, BUT am currently shopping for the following pieces: 1) an External "one-touch" style back-up USB/firewire drive, probably 400GB, as a means of backing-up my system configuration and reconsolidating the data which will be split onto the two 160GB RAID-0 drives I got. Whew, I got an earful at the technical forum regarding the inherent unreliability (and nominal to non-existent performance gain) associated with RAID-0. I bought here on percieved PRICE...compared to the single 250GB drive option, I went with the two 160GB drives (at 10K instead of 7200)...an extra 70GB for $40. I had not, however, considered the reliability issues related to spliting data across two drives. Now I know. 2) a good PSU, and 3) some extra fans (I'll have to do some research on how I would configure/install them into my system)...the Dell XPS 400 is a kind of Mini-Tower and I'm not entirely sure how much space there is for that stuff. BTW, I ultimately upgraded the included 19" analog flat-panel screen to a 20" wide-screen digital flat-panel for an additional $160...crispy;)