I'm told that the only thing that effects the speed of your render is the processor speed... can anyone confirm this? The reason for asking is that I am going to buy a dual display video card and I have the option of getting a REALY good one. I don’t use my art computer for gaming so I don’t want to waste money with a no use up grade its just for Poser 5 and Photoshop 7.0.... any help is welcome even speculation!

yep, AFAIK yer first statement is mostly correct (neglecting RAM, disk space, etc.). ya need a good video card with alotta vram for real-time displays.

Miss Nancy is correct.  A good video card with lots of ram will be a big help in viewing and working in those textured OpenGL previews, but does little of anything for your overall render times. 

So now Im leaning to the low-medium  RAM card with just enough for a smooth camera fly around... sound right? Ooh...Do I need more with the (2) monitors I'll be using?

What do you consider low RAM? I say yes the more RAM the better when using one or two displays, especially in an OpenGL environment which is what the Poser previews are, if you have more RAM on your video card you wouldn't have to look at those box shaped characters when moving their extremities. There are a lot of decent video cards out there with 256 MB of RAM for about $50. Can you put a link up on what exact video card you're looking at?

I just bought an ATI X1300 256mb for $119CDN and it works beautifully with P7!!!  With the display set to hardware it looks pretty close to rendered quality!!!  WAY better than P6 and below!!!  I only have a single core (old) processor and a 1.5gb of ram and P7 runs beautifully too!!!!

Gerard

Attached Link: http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-JATON-GEFORCE4-MX-440-PCI-64MB-DDR-2PORT-VGA-VIDEO_W0QQitemZ320060578258QQcmdZViewItem

Something like this is what I had in mind. (follow link to e-bay)

64 MB DDR (thats what I mean by LOW RAM)

That card will work fine for working in Poser but of course wont improve rendering speed as mentioned above...  However the better your video card displays the preview the more likely you'll be able to get away with rendering in preview mode and that would be a heck of a lot quicker!!  Been meaning to test it out today but am heading out soon for New Years Eve frivolity!!! 

Gerard

Do you have an AGP port/slot?

I really recommend you get a card with at least 256mb of ram.  I would look at the ones in $100-200 range.  I'd call that a medium level card.  No need to get the $300-$500 higher end cards.  I have a Radeon X1600 with 512mb of ram which cost me about $119 that works quite well with my graphics apps.
 

Quote - Attached Link: http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-JATON-GEFORCE4-MX-440-PCI-64MB-DDR-2PORT-VGA-VIDEO_W0QQitemZ320060578258QQcmdZViewItem

Something like this is what I had in mind. (follow link to e-bay)

64 MB DDR (thats what I mean by LOW RAM)

That card model you are getting is more then 4 years old, and even then it was the bottom end of the pack. Having 64 MB or 256 MB RAM on it wont do you any good if the card cant even handle a single Vicky 3 class mesh (and it cant, i had one of those clunkers a long time back)
For at least half decent results you want to get something like a Geforce 6600 or something. Or the ATI equivalent.

My bad... this is NOT the card I was going to buy, I just did a quick search to find a LOW RAM dual display card and did not take notice it was old, I intend on buying something more current. With all this GREAT imput from everybody I suspect I will look into a current nvidia dual VGA card with 256 DDR RAM, I just hope I can find one in my price range $100-150. Wish me luck, or better yet post a link where I can find this card!   THANKS AGAIN EVERY BODY!

Oh ya... jhustead... what is an AGP slot?

jhusted doesn't seem to be online at the moment so I'll field this one.

 

Many motherboards come with a slot designed just for graphics cards known as an AGP slot.

 

For example...you have  "PCI" slots which can handle a video card designed for PCI, however if your motherboard has an AGP slot,it would be in your best interest to get a card designed for the AGP slot.

 

This is important because one will not fit in the other. The AGP slot is usually located above all of your PCI slots,and is offset (Moved back).

 

PCI slots are usually white, while AGP slots are usually brown.

 

Hope this helps.

Tom

 

Did Poser 5 have already OpenGL features? I thought those came with Poser 6? So If you use your computer only for Poser 5 and Photoshop you will see no difference. All rendering is done with your main cpu. Should you upgrade to Poser 6 or Poser 7 you will see the difference - but not mit Poser 5 IIRC.

Just my 5 cents, correct me if I'm wrong.

No, you're right, no Open GL for Poser 5, so it doesn't really matter what card and how much RAM is on it (as long as it supports the desired display resolutions ;-)).

Hawkfyr: thanks for answering the question for me. I logged off early last night for some new years eve "fun"! :woot:

ScotHarvest:  To further explain Hawkfyr's answer about what an AGP slot is, AGP stands for Advanced Graphics Port because it provides a faster bandwidth than the PCI slot for the video card to display the images to your monitor.

Just to repeat it....  sorry for being that  annoying.....

The card will not make Poser 5 any faster. You need Poser 6 or 7 for that.

Quote - I'm told that the only thing that effects the speed of your render is the processor speed... can anyone confirm this? The reason for asking is that I am going to buy a dual display video card and I have the option of getting a REALY good one. I don’t use my art computer for gaming so I don’t want to waste money with a no use up grade its just for Poser 5 and Photoshop 7.0.... any help is welcome even speculation!

 

It is true that the video card does not speed up the render. Its also true that only more recent versions of Poser have supported hardware acclerated OpenGL -- however, they do so quite well. The OpenGL view of SimonG2 is extremely good-- and its realtime!  As much of my work is rotoscoped (eg, using Poser to create source for "toon-type" material, the OpenGL view is often good enough for me, and its very, very fast.

Also, note that the video card is doing the drawing for Photoshop.  . . although its a 2D application, it does depend on the video card to write to the screen (this is a direct function call, not OpenGL or DirectX) Cheap cards tend to have poor 2D performance.

Long and the short of it: Good video cards are so inexpensive that it doesn't make sense to skimp here-- $75 is the difference between mediocre and pretty darn good.

Quote - I don’t want to waste money with a no use up grade its just for Poser 5 and Photoshop 7.0.... any help is welcome even speculation!

This is from the first posting. And I am not even speculating.

Greetings,
Uwe