What kind of specs should i look for in a new computer to run poser???

here's what I've learned 1) 1.5 GIG Ram. You can get away with 1Gig if nec. However, anything over 1.5Gig and Poser says "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? I ain't listenin'" 2) AMD processor with 1024K L2Cache. This backside cache issue is KEY! Don't settle for 512K. If I were buying a Poser-oriented rig, I'd go for the AMD 64 4000,$363.99 at Tiger Direct. 3) Install several small HD and put the OS on one, the swapfile on another and your Runtime etc. on another. Store only your current project pz3s on it. All other pz3s and project stuff on external HD, which you then back up with either DVDs or another External, which you take offsite. That's my 2 cents. ::::: Opera ::::: P.S. WARNING: If by any chance of the gods Poser 7 were to come out soon and allow the app to address multi-Gigs of ram, dual processor/core support, then all advice above in part 1 and 2 is void.

Dual core is not supported by Poser (yet), but it will allow you to do something else when Poser is rendering. An Athlon64 x2 4400 is a good CPU. It has 1024K L2 cache per core, 2xFSB800 (1 FSB800 per core) to main memory, each core runs at 2.2 GHz. Go for dual channel. I'd advise installing 2x1 GB fast memory, Kingston HyperX or Crucial. Multiple fast disks. WD Raptors are fine. Plus a big disk to hold your work and backups. A decent OpenGL compliant graphics card. 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm is the best, but very pricey. nVidia Quadro is also good, but still pricey. If you can get your hands on an nVidia 6800 based card, you can tweak it into a QuadroFX4000 using RivaTuner. In fact, OpenGL speed is not priority #1. OpenGL compatibility is. The problem with most consumer graphics cards is that they are not fully OpenGL compliant. The professional cards are.

Can't add anything to the above, those really are the specs you need. Just, operaguy cracked me up. :) You talking to me? That's exactly what my Poser said on my old comp...only I ignored her. :) Myself, I have an Intel Celeron 2.8 Ghz with 512 mb ram, but I had to up the page file to 2 Gb to be able to work properly. Poser is slow on my comp, but it works fine for me. Take care, Sabra

celeron :x eww

what's the deal with P6 and 2gigs of ram? I'm working on putting together a parts list for a new pc and am planning on 2 gigs of corsair xms... and I'm planning on getting p6 in the next month or so... so what, does it not function properly with 2 gigs?

I run 4 Giga of RAM and I am often on the limits. If you work with high res textures and would like to have some figures with higher poly counts on your stage I strongly recommend as many and gigs as possible and go for the more expensive high quality RAM.

oliver, are you saying you have found a way to make Poser use more than 1 Gig+ or RAM at a given time?

Don't know. I use Poser 6 (SP2) and my system has 4 Gigs. As soon as I have big textures loaded and other apps open I have to close the other apps. Also working with Photoshop (print) need tons of RAM. The support guy from alienware only said, that more than 6 gigs is useless because I work with XP Home edition. I also work with Bryce and Shade. And these apps are also hungry for RAM.

With XP Home no application will use more than 2GB (though the rest may be used by another application). With XP Pro an application that has been coded to do so may use up to 3GB of RAM if the option is switched on at the OS level. To go beyond 3GB per application you need 64 bit Windows and applications. I'd like a bit more infor on the Poser 6-doesn't-like-2GB issue too, as I'm planning to buy or build a new machine and am aiming for at least that (and 3 if I can afford it).

even during my most massive renders, per the processes window, Poser has never addressed more than 1.2 Gig RAM peak.

its not that POser 6 does not like 2GB plus. it's the Windows 32Bit limit of 2GB per program that it's had trouble with. as poser content has grown in size, this has become an issue. SR2 went someway to fix this issue in poser and hopefully in P7 it'll be history.. bascially what is happening (at times - depends on scene etc) when Poser requests more System Ram (psychal RAM + Virtual Ram = System Ram), and it hits the Windows limit, pre SR2 it did'nt know how to handle the resulting error properly. SR2 put code inplace to patch this, but a real fix would / will require a rewriting of posers memory handling routines which at the earlist would be Poser 7. personally, your milage may vary, I've found having my System Ram capped at abou 2.5gb has avoided poser erroring. (thats Psychia.. (how the hell do you spell that??) ram at 1.5gb and Virtual at 1gb)

The maximum RAM amount a Poser 6 scene used on my system was 1.9 GB physical/1.9 GB virtual. Very close to the 2 GB per app limit of Win32.
A render that fails doesn't always fail due to memory issues. Sometimes a render crashes while there's more than 600 MB free address space, my guess is that Firefly runs into floating point errors. I hope e-frontier will address this issue too. By the way, my systems have 4 GB physical each. The Athlon64x2 4400 has 4x1GB Kingston HyperX, the Athlon64 3500+ has 4x1 GB Transcend (standard).

Message edited on: 03/01/2006 11:30