Received my new 20 iMac Duo 2Ghz Intel Dual Core yesterday, it replaces a 20 iMac G5 1.8GHhz... There is plenty of commentary around the web on the machines themselves, so I will focus simply on my initial findings concerning the performance of Bryce. Because of what I had read concerning Rosetta, and also my experiences with render times on my original iMac, I opted to load the iMac Dual Core with 2Gig of RAM and 256MB of video RAM. (My iMac G5 has 512MB of RAM) So, this is 2-3 hours of playing around... The good news: Launching Bryce didnt seem to take appreciably longer 4-5 dock bounces. Similarly, moving around inside Bryce seemed about as responsive as it was on my iMac G5 subjectively, the micro windows for whole scene and texture previews seem to take very slightly longer to refresh. For renders themselves surprise!!! They are actually faster! I rendered a 1600x1000 image containing 22 objects (13.5 million polygons) at Super (fine art) quality in around 20 minutes (it previously took a few hours). I have also (randomly) imported objects without any problems, etc, open and save dialogs work, as before.... Bryce as you would expect it. My thoughts on this are 1) Bryce is not optimised in any way for G5 processors, so there was little gained running Bryce on G5s, 2) the dual core performance is largely compensating for the performance hit introduced by Rosettas G4 emulation, and 3) the large amount of RAM is the single largest contributor to the improved render times. Now the bad news... I have found that a small number of files will NOT import. I believe this is linked to the known bug where files will only open from the Finders File/Open menu command and sometimes only after fixing permissions. I have found that this bug is worse than ever in 10.4.4 with Bryce 5.5c... I have tried fixing permissions from the boot CD, using Onyx, opening the effected files in every way imaginable no joy. Ill explore further and report back may well be coincidence (they might have become corrupted during the transfer from one machine to another) All in all very nice! Garry

Sounds like a nice new toy:) I didnt think Ram effected render times as much as your CPU does? Ram only determines how much content can be displayed and how smooth it runs; from what I have read anyways. Michael:)

Sorry Michael, it's generally taken that RAM plays a big part in the life of a brycer, although you're correct that CPU performance is the major enhancer. Rendering is quite memory hungry - a lot of data is being stored for rendering so RAM performance has an impact as does size, if your system has to start paging to disc, then you're in for a long wait. and I agree it does sound like a nice new toy....

I'm assuming that, during a render, Bryce pre-fetches data from the hard drive and holds it in RAM for rendering (because reading from RAM is always way faster than reading from a hard drive)... The larger quantity of RAM I have now allows more data to be pre-fetched and rendered than my iMac G5. I'm trying to find out if Bryce works this way. Garry

Unfortunately the iMac only supports 2Gb of RAM whereas the PowerPC G5s can load up 16Gb! Anyone know what the max the best PC can handle?

I understand pre-fetching, but isnt it a matter of calculation on the CPU's part? Sorry to be a pest here; there was a huge thread a few weeks back on the way Bryce handles system resources while rendering and the general consensus was that Ram didnt play a large roll in the rendering process. Michael:)

I also find it interesting that I can still multi task while a large render is taking place. It could be interesting to load up a resource viewer while rendering an image; to see what is actually being utilised during the render; CPU usage, available ram and current page file size. Cheers! Michael;)

@Bandolin - to address more than 4GB you need 64bit CPU - which the G5 is... The Intel Dual Core isn't, so 4GB would be the maximum (I guess possible when 2GB modules appear). So I rendered another image and this is whatI got: CPU: 98.9% utilisation Real Memory: 241.26MB Virtual Memory 946.75MB Now, I cannot hear the disk working at all and the Activity Monitor shows spikes for data reads only - so does Mac OS X go to spare memory for its VM space first? I'll poke around Apple's Dev site I think... Garry

Interesting results! And you have 2 gig ram, hmm... Michael:)

For PCs it depends on OS, windoze 2k/XP (98/ME if anyone still has them) can do 2G for OS and 2G for apps, even on 32bit cpus if you have a mobo that supports the RAM. 64bit windoze and the enhanced enterprise server version of 2k can go further, 8M for 2k, not sure about XP64, but 16G is certainly available, again look to the mobo. Linux can take more, I have 32bit Linux (Suse 8) running with 8G, I'm pretty certain it can take more, but a little irrelevant as bryce isn't on linux yet.

Cog, what the hell do you do on your Linux machine; with all that available Ram? Michael:)

@Gog_CA1 - yes there are clooges to make OS's on a 32-bit CPU's address more RAM - BUT they are clooges and don't work effectively. The chip design fundamentally means they can't REALLY address more than 4G RAM - 32-bit CPUs have 32-bit registers, meaning 2 to the power of 32 addresses, or 4 gigabytes of RAM, can be referenced. This is why the ability to address more RAM has been the primary driver for 64-bit CPU's. UPDATE on Bryce under Rosetta - seem to have uncovered a problem with the trackball remembering which setting you have enabled... Again, more testing to do. I can see its going to be a fun weekend! Garry

Good to know that bryce is alive and well of the intel imac...it really is a great deal, too bad I still have my dual G5. I really hope daz implements dual core and multiprocessor support in the next revision, I feel like a lot of my power is going to waste when only one CPU is rendering...

Attached Link: http://www.boxxtech.com/

Gog sorry to say this but a pc running windows 98se can't handle 1gig of ram. windows 98 will crash for some reason when you go over 512mb ram..i tried 1gig ram with win98se and my system kept crashing. After talking to my computer tech and a couple of IT's in America they all informed me i had to much ram for 98 and shouldn't run any more than 512mb.

Sorry CrazyDawg, windoze 98 can run more then 1g ram - (from about sp3) however much of the software can't support it photoshop is a fine example, when win98 abounded, photoshop 4 died with more then 512M, IMHO stability in 98 is poor irrespective of RAM! I have a vested interest in RAM size, I'm software engineer and I lead a team who work with databases - RAM can be critical for many of our applications (as is stability) my linux machine with 8 gig is a test bed for several SQL databases, switch pages in RAM is much quicker then doing it to disk, so it has it's uses, if the software supports it ok.