I upgraded my computer with an Athlon 64 3200+ and compatible motherboard and a few SATA drives.  Everything else is the same, including the drive where Poser is installed.

When I launch Poser it hangs at the screen which displays my name and serial number.  Task Manager shows Poser using 99% of the CPU and two instances of Poser 6 "Not Responding".  If I click on the close button in the application window, it quits instantly without an error message.

I have tried deleting my preferences, doing a clean uninstall and re-install, but that didn't fix it.

Everything worked fine prior to the upgrade and I am having no problems with other software.

Any ideas?

Drey

have you tried to see if there are updates to the cards and what nots for the drivers?

I am really suprised that we haven't seen some more answers on this because we have quite a few computer techs on the forum. From what I understand this is the processor that can run 32-bit applications and 64-bit software applications correct?  I'd be interested in seeing some opinions about this from the more savvy computer techs because I am in the process of doing research on upgrading my system with a new MB and processor and this AMD processor was one of the choices I was looking at.

You have my sympathy, drey99.  It must be hell not being able to get Poser 6 to run. I hope someone here can help you.

I would also be interested in hearing more about this topic as I'm thinking about getting a new computer.  I've always been partial to Pentium processors and was thinking about getting a system with the new dual Pentium, but my son, who is a programmer, insists that the Athlon processor blows it away.  But if it can't run Poser 6, it's not for me.  :-)

Bobette

Poser 6 works just fine on an Athlon64.

I am on a duel core, 64 bit, 4200 Athalon and my P6 runs great

Make sure when you reinstall Poser 6--that you install all the service releases!  Just P6 out of the box can hang in 64 bit machines.  Supposedly SR2 or 3 fixes that. (Dunno which--don't have 64 bit machine).

Cool I've always loved AMD chips and didn't want to switch to an intel when I build my new MB.

I found an interesting article at e-frontier.com about what system and components work best with Poser 5/6.  I found it enlightening.   I was all ready to order a 4 GB ram, dual processor system, with a top-of-the-line video card, but according to this article, Poser can't use more than 2 GB of ram, and a dual processor or Athlon Processor doesn't speed things up.  E-frontier says hard drive speed is one of the most important factors and space on the drive--now that's one thing I'm short on with all of my Poser products. LOL! :-)

Here's the link for those of you who want to read it.
http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/1470/1/598/

Of course 4 GB of ram might be great for postwork in Photoshop...

Bobette Bryan

There's a thread here talking about ways to crack the 2 gig cieling to use more RAM in poser.  I didn't pay much attention to it .  I only have systems that support only 1 gig of RAM and would like to upgrade to 2 gigs. LOL  Got a long way to go to hit 4 gigs!  Supposedly someone found a way around this limit.

Too much RAM and too much processor power is never enough. While Poser6 might not be able to use the multiple CPUs, you do benefit from being able to use your computer doing something else while it is rendering, without feeling a general slowdown, as one CPU would be rendering, and the other would be doing normal everyday stuff. And I suppose that your purchasing decisions should also take in account that almost every computing-intensive program out there is being ported to 64 bits, this could also be the case with Poser, in it's 7th release. fingers crossed

Manoloz,

I've always had the same philosophy about RAM and Processor power--you can never have enough, especially considering how fast computers become outdated. Thanks for giving me something to think about before I get my next computer.  And yes, Poser 7 is an important consideration as well.  :-)

Bobette

The article on e-frontier was written at the release of Poser. 64 Bit Processing will not benefit, but should not interfer with the operation. The RAM issue is really a Windows Limit, more than a Poser Limit. The hack that is mentioned requires altering your OS as well as Poser.

I feel for ya dude.  My new system has the Pentium processor, 2GB ram, 320 HDD, SATA. Hexagon, Carrara, Bryce, Vue, CS2, Macromedia are all running sweet on my new machine. Everything is updated. The only way I can get Poser 6 to work is to run the SR1 patch over and over again. Just Poser 6 alone and/with SR2 and SR3 crashes it. I'm pretty good at figuring things out on the system, but this one for the life of me has me freaking stumped.

Quote - I upgraded my computer with an Athlon 64 3200+ and compatible motherboard and a few SATA drives.  Everything else is the same, including the drive where Poser is installed.

When I launch Poser it hangs at the screen which displays my name and serial number.  Task Manager shows Poser using 99% of the CPU and two instances of Poser 6 "Not Responding".  If I click on the close button in the application window, it quits instantly without an error message.

I have tried deleting my preferences, doing a clean uninstall and re-install, but that didn't fix it.

Everything worked fine prior to the upgrade and I am having no problems with other software.

Any ideas?

Drey

Drey,

I don't know if you've resolved the problem, but in case you haven't, I found something about
this on e-frontier's website tonight. 

Here's the link:
Data Execution Prevention May Prevent Poser 6 from Launching
http://www.e-frontier.com/article/archive/330

Bobette

Quote - Too much RAM and too much processor power is never enough. While Poser6 might not be able to use the multiple CPUs, you do benefit from being able to use your computer doing something else while it is rendering, without feeling a general slowdown, as one CPU would be rendering, and the other would be doing normal everyday stuff. And I suppose that your purchasing decisions should also take in account that almost every computing-intensive program out there is being ported to 64 bits, this could also be the case with Poser, in it's 7th release. fingers crossed

ay, theres the rub.
i only have athlon 64s. my main machine is a dual core with 4 gigs of ram... and while poser doesnt make use of the second core or the extra memory, it benefits me greatly. i can have a poser render going and alt tab out to photoshop, silo, whatever and just work away like nothing is happening. also its nice to have a huge render going and tab over to your web browser, for example, and not have to wait 5 min with your computer churning away. you rarely benefit from a dual core in a single application (unless it is designed to make use of multiprocessors, like 3ds max), but they definitely have their place when you are multitasking. i never just have poser open - i usually have poser, firefox with about a dozen tabs, silo, uvmapper, photoshop, etc open.

btw - if you have more than a couple of gigs of ram then disable paging executive in windows xp. it removes the pool of system files that windows forces into your pagefile, and makes it more responsive.

My setup is similar to Blackhearted's: 4 GB RAM, Dualcore AMD 64 bit CPU, etc. (soon to be replaced by Core 2-based Intel CPUs).

I think he makes a good point about the fact that although dualcore won't speed things up directly in Poser, it will make your system much more responsive when you're doing other things while rendering. I often work in Photoshop while Poser renders in the background. With a single-core/single CPU the Poser rendering would slow down the system.

Like someone else has already mentioned: The 2 GB limit is actually a limit of 32 bit Windows, not Poser itself (in practice, the limit is about 1.8 GB. The theoretical limit is 4 GB, but Windows reserves the other half for itself).  There are ways to tweak the setup for Windows, so that  programs can take advantage of up to 3 GB (the /3GB switch), but it's generally not recommended and the application has to support it. Although Poser works fine under 64 bit Windows, it still (of course) won't see more than 2 GB. We'll have to wait for 64 bit Poser to take advantage of 2 GB+.

However, having over 3 GB of RAM is still useful (when you run XP with the latest SPs, Windows reports 'only' 3 GB of system RAM, even though you've got 4 GB), because if you're a multitasker and work with several programs simultaneously, each program can fit into physical RAM and things will go smoother/faster since Windows doesn't have to swap to disk that much. Although 4 GB sounds comfortable, I often find myself pushing the memory limits, so I really look forward to the day when most of my memory-hungry applications have been ported over to 64 bit.

I am completely sold on dual-core processors so much so that my next mother board build will have one. Even if poser does not use more than 2 GB of ram that fact that you can have poser rendering on one core while the other core handles the other programs running is outstanding.

It would be very exciting to see a 64-bit poser 7 program that would take advantage of dual-core, higher GB RAM machines.

Cheers,
Micheál

Quote - My setup is similar to Blackhearted's: 4 GB RAM, Dualcore AMD 64 bit CPU, etc. (soon to be replaced by Core 2-based Intel CPUs).

InverseSpline, I'm curious. Why are you going from the AMD 64 bit to the Core 2 Intel CPU?  Is the Intel CPU much better?  I too always have other programs open when I'm rendering--usually Photoshop or some other graphics editing program, and, of course, I'm always on the internet. 

Thanks,
Bobette

Isn't a  2.0Ghz dual core two single cores at 1.0 Ghz each rated together as 2.0Ghz? :huh:

If you had two CPUs rated at 2.0Ghz each one a dual core and one not wouldn't poser realy be running at only 1.0Ghz on the dual when it could be running at the full 2.0Ghz on the single core?

:blink:

I have two machines, both running 4Gb, one intel 3GHz and one AMD64 X2 4800+. The AMD64 is running XP64 -- both running 7200 RPM SATA II disks.

The "patch" (using editbin) to see the extra memory cleared up all my render failings, which occured quite frequently and no combination of render settings could fix (even with SR3). Technicaly, the single core is faster than the dual core, but I have not really seen render times faster for the single core. Looking at processor loading, the single core does not give poser 100% of the cpu clocks. The dual core gives poser very nearly 100% of the dedicated processor's clocks(49-50% useage of two processors = one processor at ~100%). I have not seen any change in render times while I am doing prep work in Photoshop or Manga Studio. This is all anecdotal as I have not actually profiled poser with either system.

BTW the patch for WinXP64 involves updating the poser executable only, with no OS hack at all. Note that 32bit apps (poser) run in a 32bit virtual space on 64bit systems. This virtual space, although pretty efficient, still takes extra CPU clocks. A single core 64bit system might render slower than a 32bit single core system, all else being equal. I suppose poser's memory limit is perhaps meaningful for 32bit systems that address a max of 4Gb RAM. It makes no sense for 64bit systems that access much more RAM.

Bottom line, I do all my poser work on my AMD running XP64 and love it, and I am itching to get more even memory.

Regarding the original problem, did you reinstall poser, or just reuse your old disk with the new mobo?

flatulent.

but fair

Quote - I am completely sold on dual-core processors so much so that my next mother board build will have one. Even if poser does not use more than 2 GB of ram that fact that you can have poser rendering on one core while the other core handles the other programs running is outstanding.

It would be very exciting to see a 64-bit poser 7 program that would take advantage of dual-core, higher GB RAM machines.l

The good news is that dual-core is relatively cheap nowadays, and I personally believe that dual/multi-core will eventually replace single-core CPUs. Dual/multi-core will become standard. I also think it's nice to see that 8 GB RAM capacity is becoming more widespread on 'mainstream' motherboards. RAM prices have also fallen considerably, so it could be interesting to see how things look like in a few years. I expect to run a 64 bit OS like Vista Premium/Ultimate (which reportedly needs at least 1 GB RAM to run smoothly) and perhaps a 64 bit version of Poser that would make my workflow a bit easier in terms of memory needs.

The rating for AMD dual core CPUs uses real clock speed of each core multiplied by the number of cores. So a X2 4800+ has two cores with 2.4 GHz each. The single core version with 2.4 GHz real clock speed is the 3900+. So one core should of course be faster than a 3GHz Pentium.

Quote - I'm curious. Why are you going from the AMD 64 bit to the Core 2 Intel CPU?  Is the Intel CPU much better?  I too always have other programs open when I'm rendering--usually Photoshop or some other graphics editing program, and, of course, I'm always on the internet.

I'm going over to Core 2 because it's faster (even though my liquid-cooled FX-60@3 Ghz is no slouch) and can be overclocked relatively easily. Numerous benchmarks have demonstrated that (and made a real impact on AMD owners like me...). The speed increase is not as high when running 64 bit apps, but the Core 2 still have a performance advantage in general. The prices are also very attractive, giving a superb performance/price ratio.

Later this year, Intel will also release quad-core CPUs such as  Kentsfield (I've seen benchmarks of this processor -- a so-called Intel Engineering Sample -- and the performance numbers are impressive indeed!), and I plan to upgrade to one of those when they're released.

Quote - I have two machines, both running 4Gb, one intel 3GHz and one AMD64 X2 4800+. The AMD64 is running XP64 -- both running 7200 RPM SATA II disks. ... Technicaly, the single core is faster than the dual core, but I have not really seen render times faster for the single core.

I presume your 3 Ghz Intel CPU is based on the older NetBurst architecture, which should indicate that the X2 would yield better results, even though the clock frequency is lower (the AMDs are more efficient). I've not tested AMD64 and Intel (NetBurst) directly against each other in Poser, but I know that the AMD is generally faster clock for clock.

The Core 2 with Intel's new microarchitecture is, however, even more efficient than the AMDs. For example, a 1.86 Ghz Core 2 outperforms an Intel D960 3.6 Ghz (both dualcore) in 3DSMax/Cinema 4D benchmarks (the 3.6 Ghz Intel is about as fast as a 2.2 Ghz AMD X2 4200). So clock-frequency can be very misleading nowadays unless we know what chips we're talking about.

Quote - A single core 64bit system might render slower than a 32bit single core system, all else being equal.

I've performed Poser benchmarks in 64- and 32-bit Windows XP Pro (both on a FX-60 processor), and the results were roughly the same.

Thanks for the info, InverseSpline.  My son insists that AMD processors are superior, but I remain  unconvinced. I believe I'm going to stick with Intel and get the best dual core processor I can afford.  That Quad core sounds impressive. :-)

Bobette Bryan

Quote - Thanks for the info, InverseSpline.  My son insists that AMD processors are superior, but I remain  unconvinced. I believe I'm going to stick with Intel and get the best dual core processor I can afford.  That Quad core sounds impressive. :-)

AMD CPUs were generally faster, but the new Intel Microarchitecture has changed that. You can find more info and links to benchmarks here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2

The quad-core is planned to ship Q4 this year.