Hi all: I see the new 512mb graphics card are out in stores. Will the increased RAM on the card help Poser run better? Thanks, Sherrie

bookmarking this lol

The graphics card only affects your Open GL preview in Poser 6 - has nothing at all to do with rendering....

Although the graphics card doesn't affect rendering, it can affect preview quality and speed thereof. I'd say 256MB or more is plenty on a graphics card unless you're playing the latest hot 3D games. I'd also suggest that the Sreed option seems to be preferred over OpenGL. If you want Poser to 'run better', the standard suggestions are these: * More physical RAM (up to 2GB). Poser won't support any more. * Fast harddisk - Poser spends a lot of time chugging through the library as well as searching for textures, geometry, and whatnot. SATA may be the answer if available. * More CPU. Poser has been, is, and will always be a CPU hog. The more CPU speed you give it, the faster it will eat it up (and perform). Note that Poser is not multiprocessor-aware. Dualcore, CoreDuo, Dual CPU will not help.

also, use a smaller starting runtime (as you can have multiple runtimes) and also a smaller working runtime if you can - It all depends on what you're doing.

Surprisingly, I have not had any consequences with a large Runtime (about 12GB). My greatest impediment has been processes and tasks. If you have spurious (i.e.: not necessary at the time) tasks and processes running all the time, this can impact Poser performance - and that of other applications as well. For instance, QuickTime and iTunes tend to run all sorts of junk. I either edit the Windows registry to stop them from running at start or kill them outright. Why should I need iTunes Helper or whatever when iTunes isn't running? Skrew Apple and their continuous tasks! :) Even if the task is just sitting there doing nothing, it occupies memory and it occupies the multitasker (as it has to check it every cycle). There should be an option on every task to set a timeout - if the timeout is reached without activity, eradicate the useless pos mercilessly (it would also be a good way to murder most horridly those nasty mf's like spyware - die, die, DIE!) ;) Any task without a user-set timeout, give it an hour at most and kill it, destroy it, heck, erase it from the harddrive and overwrite zeros for the next minute...

There should be an option on every task to set a timeout Whether Windows inherited its "Fibber Magee closet" mentality from Apple ("inherited" is my concession to politeness for the day), it is just as offensive in this regard. My WinNT directory is crammed with drivers for products I will never own, including products I probably can't even buy anymore, except on eBay. Likewise, my processes list is choking on obscurely titled Execs that I am almost positive are contributing nothing to the running of the computer. They are just running "because they can!!" The first time I chose, in desperation, to ignore the "If you stop this process, you may cause earthquakes that kill innocent children" warning, nothing happened. Well, Ok, the stupid program that had gone into some sort of humming catatonic trance went away. And then came back happy when I restarted it. But no smoke from the CPU, no fissure in the monitor, no disintegrating clatter from the hard disk, no crowd of greasy roaches launched at my face, no massive but sexually unendowed red demons dancing around me making gestures that might have gotten them barred from American Bandstand and chanting "Flip you, Buddy!" Nothing bad at all. That's not to say you can't blow your computer's brains out by aborting an essential process. It's to say that the Redmond socios are too bloody lazy to distinguish the buttons that will blow up your house from the ones that turn off the lights. At a bare minimum, an actual message that relates to the function of the process would be nice. I have a process called MSTask that clogs my CPU on a regular basis. It sounds essential, probably even a kernel process, huh? Well, it's run by an app I quit using years ago. Or thought I had. Its function? Good question. It took me more than a year to track down as much as I do know. Thank Dog MS doesn't build cars. Almost everyone would be driving them (I mean, what can you do? They're what everybody drives!!). And the only upside is that once they were in use world wide, the Zero Population folks will be able to sleep easy. Me? I'm going to look into win4lin's compatibility with my 3D stuff, after having WMP7 secretly install Roxio Easy CD on my production machine, which proceeded to disconnect my CD drive for a day and a half while I tried to figure out how an error caused by an application I would never allow on my machines could be related to the most virginal computer I own. M

Attached Link: http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm

Actually, I'm running NT and W2K, but I'll give it a look. When my choices are down to XP and Vista, I will be migrating to Linux. M

can you get poser running on linux? - Xp ain't that different to 2K ya know... just some bells and whistles.. and a lot more stable... shrug your choice tho...

Message edited on: 03/23/2006 08:29

Things like the iPod service for iTunes is launched every time you run iTunes, but it doesn't go away when iTunes is exited. But I agree with Khai that there are ways to keep unwanted and safe-to-remove services and processes from running or only run when needed (changing the service from 'automatic' to 'manual' or 'disabled', for instance). It's great when companies install software for you without your consent - sort of like the Sony BMG debacle, but hopefully never as devious.

WinXP IS WinNT 6.0 . They essentially renamed it for marketing purposes with Win2000. That way they didn't have to admit the damned thing was two years late. Win2000 and WinXP both run on the NT kernel. If you like Win2000, you'll love XP.

M$ wanted to move away from the old kernel (Win95/98/Me) to the NT kernel exclusively. This was accomplished almost completely with the release of WinXP SP2 (all but multilanguage IME support in XP Home). Generally, this is a good idea on their part. It reduces the number of kernels that need to be coded and updated (etc.) and it gets rid of the old, crippled, unstable kernel. The NT kernel is by far the better of the two (once I moved to NT4.0, I never used 95/98/ME on any system afterwards). NT4.0, Win2000 Pro, WinXP Pro, WinXP Pro x64. Look how long it's taking M$ to release Vista. Now they are pushing until after the new year. 2 billion developers and they still can't produce a timely OS... ;)

I never worked on any non-NT Windows products for any length of time. My first computer at home was an NT3 workstation for doing Photoshop and Lightwave. What little I used 95, 98, ME, I hated. What junk. The NT kernel is very stable. About the only thing that can hurt it is bad drivers. That was a problem on NT3. Drivers. Now with XP, it's the best of both worlds. You get the NT kernel, with a nice, friendly "front end" plugged on to it. At work, I've used UNIX since 1991. Before that, big IBM mainframes. Never had a computer at home before 1995. UNIX is okay. Rarely crashes. It'll hang, though. And it's a huge pain memorizing all that unintuitive code. I'm told linux is like Unix for x86 boxes. Ugh. I'll take XP, thanks. Back to the topic, though. I'd buy a graphics card with 512 Meg on it, if I had the money to spare. If you work with big scenes, you need all you can get for your OpenGL previews. I've got a Radeon X800 XT with 256Meg right now. I want MORE! If you don't work with huge scenes, I wouldn't spend the dough.

Ah, UNIX. Tried it, liked it somewhat, and, as you, hated the tediousness. When the simplest of command line commands has a 'man page' of 360 pages, one must start wondering about the usefulness and possible intentional obsfucation. I equate UNIX to learning to be fluent in Chinese. If you need to be fluent in Chinese, then all power to you, but if you can get away with Spanish and it has most of the advantages without 50,000 individual complex ideographs to memorize and accurately precise song-like pronunciation, guess where I'm going. ;P

Interesting that NT was the first decent version of Windows, since the NT kernel was actually a pilfered version of the OS/2 kernel they had to develop to IBM standards. Most WinNT 3.51 compatible apps will run on OS/2: No coincidence. And an interesting bit of evidence, for those who needed one, that MS couldn't program a toaster without outside supervision. Like ants, they depend on volume, not intelligence. If you ask for a house, they'll give you an anthill. My problems with XP are political: Nobody tells me I can't change my hard disk without their permission, and MS got just a bit too cozy with the Big Brother plutocrats and Nazi wannabees in Washington after the Republicans decided there's nothing wrong with being a predatory monopoly after all. I'm watching Google and waiting for someone to write a Linux shell as civilian-friendly as the Mac/Win shell. It's already good enough for me, but I want it to be good enough that my Aunt Martha can toss Bill Gates and his gay-bashing theocon boy toys a finger of farewell. And personal: I'm not an idiot, and I won't use a product that assumes I am and punishes me for not being one. I have an XP machine at work, and I spent some time tracking down and turning off as many of the smarmy "Here let me HELP you!!!" features as I could, but it still is a PIA, being interrupted regularly, being unable to find a menu item because XP decided I didn't need it, and turning off functions like the #&#;^$ "Reading Mode" only to have some idiot in the box turn them back on again. No thanks. M

so... you came into a thread about graphics cards, not connected in much way to XP, to rant about XP? illogical Captain...

It's called "drift." :) I don't think I started it, but who knows? How 'bout them Radeons? M

don't think I'll get another ATI card after the trouble I had with them a few years back.. 15 attempts to get the drivers to take... and the machine would still boot in 16 colour mode.. (this is back on 95/98) ... went to a Voodoo3 and the drivers took first time.. went to a Geforce.. and no probs... all the hassles I had with the ATI's just left too sour a taste for me..

Dang, it worked! I have an "old" nVidia card, 64Meg RAM, a 440, and I'm wondering if the skinned faces and screwball hither problems in P6 OpenGL are remedied by jacking up the RAM? I understand that video RAM has no effect on render; that's why I went cheap on the card. But it might be worth 50 bucks to stop having Steph's and Jessi's eyes and teeth pop out whenever the OpenGL gets sauced. I'm guessing that this is an implementation problem that RAM won't fix, since it doesn't happen in Carrara 5 Pro with essentially the same files. Y'all with nVidia 256s seeing the same problem? M

here I have a GeForce FX 5200, 128mb card (running 2 monitors) - had no OpenGl problems at all.. and with the newest drivers, it's flying :) tried my wifes Geforce 4TI4600, 128mb, and no problems there ethier.. hell, I've had no OpenGL problems with Poser 6 / Nvidia, trueSpace 4.3/6 / Nvidia....

Hmmm... Well, I've been using them since I switched from NT4 to XP a few years ago. Never had a problem. It's all a matter of personal taste when you get to comparing the high end GeForce cards with ATI's better cards. If I were ordering a machine today, I'd probably want the Radeon X1900 XT. Hot card.