I want to upgrade it. I mean, a new video card, and probably memory. But take care, i'm a noob :p

In addition, if someone could "translate" my computer caracteristics for me, i don't really know what i have, and what i have to go to. Here is what my CPU is made of:

AMD Sempron 3000+
2.00 GHz, 448 Mo of RAM

Does it mean my actual memory is about 448Mo? I guess i need much more ;p
And what about video card, i've been told the NVidia 7300 series would be the minimum to get.

You'll need at least 2 Mb of RAM, preferrably DDR2 and I would go with the nVidia GeForce 7800 series with at least 512 Mb of Video ram if your MB will take a PCI Express card.  From the looks of your AMD MB you might need to upgrade that, as well.

Your actual memory is 512 MB, but 64 MB is used by the onboard graphics chip.

The Sempron 3000+ is about the fastest CPU that fits in your mainboard. No use upgrading the CPU.
Add another bank of 512 MB memory, maybe even 1 GB, and add a decent nVidia graphics card. A 7300 is fairly OK, a 7600GT is better, and not overly expensive.

Your PC will not be the fastest on the block, but the upgrades we're talking about here are not very expensive (512 MB should be around € 50. a 7600 GT around € 100), and it will definitely improve the general performance of the machine.

If you want significantly more performance, you'll need a new PC. The best value for money are PCs based on the Intel Core 2 Duo processors, you should be able to get an E6400 machine, with a good graphics card, 2 GB of RAM and a large fast disk for around € 800,-

Wow, thanks both. I didn't figure i could upgrade it for only around 150€ and having a good improvement!

@svdl, what is an E6400 machine? (noob noob noob i am :blushing: )

The Intel E6400 CPU is one of the Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs. At this time, the Intel Core 2 Duo series delivers more bang for the buck than than the AMD Athlon64 Am2 series. So if you're going to buy a complete new machine, make it an Intel.
The Core 2 Duo series consists of several CPUs : the E4300, E6300, E6400, E6600, QX6700 (that's quad core - 4 CPUs in one chip!) and X6800 Extreme (and I'm probably forgetting a couple) 
All these CPUs are dual core - 2 CPUs in one chip. The E4300 is the low end of the line, and the cheapest of the series, while the quad core QX6700 and the X6800 Extreme are the high end (and expensive, close to € 1000 for the CPU alone!). The E6300 and E6400 give you the best value for money at this time.

You render your stuff on 512mb?  Holy crap, hats off!  I thought you were great before you mentioned that, but now I know you have incredible patience too!  :)

Just be aware that a better video card will not affect your render times; and memory may help you quite a bit (probably a LOT).  Depending on how much you are willing to spend though, processor + memory (which really means motherboard + processor + memory +  graphics card in your case) will greatly shorten your render times.

@pjz99, the image linked above took about 5 hours for the render with 1900x1425 pixels wide. While i'm sleeping at night, my computer is working  :D

Attached Link: French Beauties - Marie

One thing I found when I was putting together a new system is that if you are only doing 3D graphics and not any type of high tech animation or movie making or playing any of those high end PC games that require super fast cards, that you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on a graphic card.

Unless a program specifically states that you need a particular model of a graphic card, go with a cheaper one and save yourself some moula!   My new computer has an nVidia 7300 card and it's just fine for what I need and it only cost $75.00 vs the 7600 or 7800 which was $650 and $800.00 and way more card than I would ever need on a computer.

So don't get sucked into being over sold something that you don't need.  You don't need a 500 foot yaught to go catch a fish on the river.

Vince if you can be as productive as you are, with such high quality and beauty, on equipment like you have - if you had bigger hardware, you could shake the pillars of Heaven.

LOL!
It's not my goal :)
But if you could know how many times i lost a file because of an app crash, or how much time i spend with my preview renders or preview final renders to see if all is ok ;p

Well........i would also suggest getting a whole new pc!
if you want a pc that would last you a looooong time with minimal amount of upgrades here is my suggestion:

a new motherboard that supports intel dual core, core 2 duo, quad core cpu's. If you dont want to spend too much on a cpu right now go for a dual core like 3.4Ghz. You can always upgrade it to a more expensive one later if you buy a good motherboard. Now, RAM, 1GB is....ok......you must remember one thing, if you have only 1GB in your machine and you are using poser windows is probably using half that just being on, and rendering with hight resolution textures will eat the rest up like cake and it will crash!! I would suggest getting at least 2GB. Poser on a good rendering day will use at least 1GB while rendering, if you have memory to spare it wont crash! and your rendering time will go down. Memory speed with a new motherboard should be DDR2 800, i suggest 2x 1GB chips. harddrive, if you buy the new motherboard get a new SATA2 drive, one with a 16MB cache on it. these drives are nice and fast and windows will allocate data on it much faster that other drives. size is up to you! graphics card, well this is up for debate! do you play games? do you only use poser? any 7 series card should do nicely, the GT based cards are faster but they cost more. the only difference with graphics card would be hardware shading in poser, your preview would be better if its enabled. if you also play games get a card with lots of memory and one with 256bit memory on it.

a new multicore support motherboard will take you far.
i upgraded my pc a month ago and poser is flying now! the pc i got is as follows:
3.4GHz Dual core CPU
4GB DDR2 800 Memory
500GB SATA2 harddrive
Geforce 7950gt Graphics card.
Windows Vista Ultimate.

i would also suggest a 64-bit operating system but i dont know if poser supports that.
hope this helps you!!

FYI, the quad core QX6700 Core 2 Extreme 2.66 GHz, is the same price!!! as the dual core X6800 Core 2 Extreme 2.93 GHz:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115011 Quad-core $965US
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115001 Dual-core $975US

And as I've found out in the past couple of days, the 4-core chip is very easy to overclock if you're into that; I raised my clock speed from 2.66 to 3.0 GHz and ran about 5 hours of render, on all 4 cores at 100% utilization, very stable.

For moving Poser -> Vue as Vince does quite a bit, more than 1GB of memory is very valuable, and if you're willing, 4GB or 8GB with the 64-bit install of Vue 6 under 64-bit Windows XP is really comfortable.  No more problems with memory getting filled up when importing a complex scene.

If i follow what all you were saying, i have to go for a E6400 machine, 2GB of RAM and a Geforce 7300 (otherwise, it will cost quite bucks...), with XP(i have other apps that won't be compatible with XP)

Well you don't "have to" - how much money do you want to spend, in Euros?  Are you completely prepared to reinstall all your software including operating system?

If you decide you want to do a processor upgrade, you're really talking about at least 4 items:
Processor itself
A new motherboard that supports the new processor (your current one DEFINITELY will not support any Intel processor)
New video card that supports the new motherboard - although perhaps you can look at a motherboard that has an integrated video card, I can't recommend that
New memory that supports the motherboard - there's a risk that your current memory will not work with the new motherboard, and very likely your current memory will not combine well with new memory

You probably are going to need a new power supply as well, because the power consumption of the new processor and video gear will probably be too much for your current power supply.

And ... you may need a new case too, because the new power supply .... may not fit in your current case.  As you can see this rapidly goes crazy and you are selling your cat and maybe some organs ...

I don't want to sell my cats! (actually, i have three cats, how much could i get for three cats?) lol

Seriously, i was thinking of upgrading some pieces of my actual CPU, but i see it would be wiser to change all the beast.

And if i take a ready built one like that:

• E6400 machine with Intel Core 2 Duo Processors
• 2GB of RAM
• a good graphic card (maybe a 7300)

svdl was saying upper i could find that for around 800€, is it right?

And will this configuration faster my render time?
Another one, my actual configuration does not plenty support Vue preview mode (it makes weird things in the preview window), i suppose the new one will perfectly support the preview mode with the new graphic card.

Sorry for so much questions, but i know how use a computer, but about knowing how this work, and what it is made of, it makes me crazy...! With all your explainations, i'm beginning to become more aware of all this alien language ;p

svdl probably has better information because he is in Europe (NL I believe) but I will take a look from here for some European vendors and see what I come up with (I am in US).  I'm sure some other computer gear heads have opinions also.

A dual core processor will make your renders many times faster than your current machine, at the same quality.  With bigger processor + memory, you can also think about rendering at much higher quality, or more complex scenes, or both.

No graphics card will shorten your render times, but it will make moving around in the Preview much more comfortable, and can show you higher resolution with comfortable speed; be aware that Louguet here has tested SLI (two graphics cards in the same box) configurations and he has found no real benefit even for that, so avoid SLI configs.

A newer model video card will probably improve some parts of Vue preview, and will definitely improve Poser previews.

Some French vendors that sell Core 2 Duo PCs that are below 1,000€ :
prixdunet  - I have no information on GrosBill computers, but Acer is OK (cheapest of these).  They are not famous for high quality but they are inexpensive...

keloo.fr - Packard Bell is about the same quality as Acer, cheapest choice

clubic.com - Acer cheapest again on this list

Hope this helps!  Note that I am very sure you can get better prices/higher quality than these, this is just what I can puzzle out, I don't speak or read Français.

PS:  I don't think VAT is included for any of these prices.

edit - .... uh, you ARE in France, right?  Or Belgium?

with an onboard graphics card it will use your system memory(ram) as video memory, and this will make the memory available to windows and applications less, depending on how much physical memory you have you get some pretty good onboard ones that you can bump up to 512MB if you want, but then i would suggest at least 3GB of ram in your system. a completely new graphics card is the better option in my opinion. and as i mentioned one that supports hardware shading will greatly improve your preview window.
i cant help you with prices, im in south africa and stuff here is waaaayyyyyyyyy expensive!

Thanks for all advices and links. It gaves me an idea.

And yes i'm in France, isn't it obvious i'm french with my bad english?? :biggrin:

ruana, just as an example, and without including your Vista Ultimate, how much did you pay for your actual configuration, i mean:
3.4GHz Dual core CPU
4GB DDR2 800 Memory
500GB SATA2 harddrive
Geforce 7950gt Graphics card

And do you think it could fit into my poo and weak computer?

well if you put it into euros i paid about 1150 for it all.
that includes the cpu, memory, motherboard, graphics card, harddrive, gigabyte case, power supply, liquid cooling system.
i didnt buy vista, got a copy from a mate.

and this is all with the exchange rate, so im sure you would be able to get a similar system for under 1000 no problem! if you are not gona run a 64-bit operating system you dont need 4GB of memory, 32-bit operating systems only see about 3.25GB in total. So 3GB would be nice, it makes a huge difference!!!

Vince your English is better than many Americans' is, don't worry.  I thought you were French based on previous gallery postings (L'Anneau for example).
If you have any choice, I would suggest Windows XP 64-bit edition, rather than Vista, based on the many people who have problems with it.  XP 64 works very well for me.

Attached Link: The Maxdata at Ebuyer

I'm looking around the net, but i found several sort of 7300 graphic cards, some 7300GT, 7300SE, etc...

But what is the difference between all those? Which is better?

lol, i'm still asking something...

I saw several computer with the correct configuration i asked, but with a 7500LE graphic card. What is the better between this and 7300GT?
I saw one computer about 700€ but with 7500LE card, and only 1GB RAM. But i could add another 1GB.

Nvidia has some product information:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7300.html  for the 7300 series, there is a side-by-side feature comparison
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7950.html for the 7950 series, another side-by-side comparision done on the same scale

The big difference between 7300 series is the speed at which information is moved into and out of the video memory for the card.  Be aware though that many of the performance measurements are not based around OpenGL, and may not have much to do with Poser/Vue performance.  Most of the statistics you find for processor and graphics card in general do not really reflect the performance you will get using "real" 3d applications, as opposed to games.

It is hard to put an exact number on how the different cards will work in each application (Vue, Poser) and with different content, but basically the bigger cards (bigger numbers) will be much more smooth when scrolling around in preview, but that depends on exactly what's going on in your program - e.g. some cameras in Poser 7 scroll very fast, and some (Posing camera) do not.  I'm talking about when you are in full textured/shaded preview using the OpenGL engine.

Some useful CPU benchmark information (so you know where the E6400 really stands) can be gotten from Louguet's benchmark page:
http://renderfred.free.fr/
http://renderfred.free.fr/benchmarks.html 
http://renderfred.free.fr/vuemark.html
Also en Francçais, which you might find useful.  Be aware that the dual AMD Opteron configurations are not quite a fair comparison between the single Intel E6400; a quad core Intel Xeon or Core 2 would be more appropriate.

Regarding the Nvidia "7500LE",  I expect that is an integrated video chip like you have, and probably should be avoided.
Edit: oops, it appears to actually be an expansion card like any other, but I would remain suspicious:

http://forums.pcworld.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=27875

Nvidia have a very flexible naming system

In this case they seem to be using SE, LE, GS and GT with the GT being the fastest.

Try to find the GT model where you can. Some models of 7300 GT may even outperform the next card up the 7600 GS.

Check the memory offered on that 7500 LE. If its a lot then it could be "Turbocache" and they are just being generous with your own main memory. Avoid!

Finally, i can't wait more to buy a new computer, because i reached the limits of my actual one.
I saw this CPU, can somebody tell me if the different pieces are good or not??

Vince, that's a decent machine. The mainboard has an Intel P965 chipset, which supports all Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, including the quad cores.
The Maxtor drive is decent, but 160 Gb isn't all that much these days. On the other hand, installing an extra hard disk is fairly easy, and you can have a 300 Gb SATA II disk for around € 75
Same goes for memory: 2x512 Mb isn't really much, but the mainboard has two additional slots for memory, so you can easily upgrade to more (put in another 2 x 1 Gb and you'll have 3 Gb of memory in total, which should work very well with both Poser and Vue.

nVidia is phasing out the 7xxx series of graphics cards in favor of the 8xxx series. Not that the 7600GS isn't a good card - it is - but it does not support DirectX 10, which means that its performance under Vista will be not as good as an 8xxx series card of the same price.

I'd say the configuration is not bad, but also not very competitive. For Poser/Vue, I'd recommend more RAM and a bigger hard disk.

Actually, for just a little more money ( € 850) you can have a system with the following specifications:
CPU: Intel Q6600 quad core (twice as fast)
4 GB RAM DDR2-667 (DDR2-800 doesn't give you more performance, but does cost more money)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (320 GB SATA II harddisk)
DVD +/- RW optical drive
Floppy drive
nVidia 8500GT Silent graphics card (abut as fast as the 7600 GS under XP, but much faster under Vista)
MSI P965 based mainboard (great quality, and silent)
Arctic Cooling Silentium T2 Pro system case with 500W power supply unit - more than enough to run this system and you can always add extra components (extra hard drives, for example).

In short, a system that blows the one you mention out of the water. Twice as fast, at least.

In the Netherlands, there are several stores where you can specify what components you want to have in your system, and the store will build the system to those specifications. Usually, such a system delivers more bang for the buck than the typical ready-made system. 
The main reason is that the ready made systems are geared towards gaming. Usually that means less RAM than you'd really like, a graphics card that is relatively overpowered, and less disk space than is useful.

Probably this kind of store also exists in France. I'll gladly help you specify a system that will be REALLY fast for Poser/Vue work, and that's still within budget.

JUST in case you are interested to know - (as I am not any sort of grammar nazi)

CPU stands for Central Processing Unit.  That's actually just something inside the PC, the processor.  
PC is probably the acronym you are looking for which stands for Personal Computer.

When I first saw the thread and so many replies I thought, woot a thread to show me how to overclock my processor = D ie get my cpu up.

Thanks svdl! Since the beginning, you've always been patient and good advices. I will try to find such a store to specify the components i need. BTW, i don't want Vista, i prefer stay with XP. So will i need a Nvidia 8500GT or could i stay with a 7600GS??

jjroland- ;P
I'm french so i try to do my best in english... lol

""jjroland- ;P
I'm french so i try to do my best in english... lol""

Ahhh good enough then = D  My entire American bread English speaking family still insists on refering to the thing as a CPU ...

Both nVidia 8500GT and nVidia 7600GS work fine in Windows XP, both 32 bit and 64 bit.
A 7600GS will be harder to find nowadays. I recommend a 8xxx series graphics card, not because they're faster or better, but because driver support will extend much longer. I expect that nVidia will stop making driver improvements for the 7xxx series within the coming year. 

I can highly recommend Windows XP Pro 64 bit for the new system. Based on Windows Server 2003 64-bit, it's stable, fast, and all XP programs I have work flawlessly on XP 64 bit.
Poser 7 can use up to 4 GB on XP 64 bit, and Vue 6 Infinite 64 bit works like a dream - I have no problem rendering scenes with over 30 Poser characters with hires textures, plus lots of ecosystems (easily 5,000,000,000 polygons) with complex lighting.
The only problem with XP 64 bit is limited driver support. nVidia is no problem, however, they have good XP 64 bit drivers for their graphics chips and mainboard chipsets. Intel is no problem either.

*"I have no problem rendering scenes with over 30 Poser characters with hires textures, plus lots of ecosystems (easily 5,000,000,000 polygons) with complex lighting."

*Wow! If i have more than 1 character, everything is VERY slow!! lol
Do you think as soon as i will have my new computer, i will fall on my knees and begin to pray...??
:D

BTW, when you were talking about stores where you can specify the components you need, were you thinking about physical stores or online stores? (i have to say i'm a little hesitant to have a computer coming by post...)

Quote -
CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. 
.

nono..

CPU = Cat Powered Unit

like RAM = Rarely Adequate Memory....

Just my $.02...

I think the CPU is one of the cheapest parts, when you're buying the whole Shabang  I would recommend saving CPU changes for "Core" changes(of like the Mainboard;) especially if you're into Dells'/Compaqs'/or HPs VS. building your own.  I've swapped Hard Drives, RAM DIMMs, and Video Cards out of my computers, hundreds of times, but the CPU has always been another story!  

svdl - Something i just checked: i use Vue6 ProStudio, and it doesn't use 64bits, so i could have XP 32bits instead. So have i to reduce the processors to 2? (i think ProStudio version only uses 2)

Actually you can probably (very likely, not certain) get your 32-bit versions of applications to run just fine under Windows XP 64-bit.  I've used Poser 7 and a bunch of other 32-bit apps with very few problems (notably Reiss BodyStudio).

The "number of processors" limit for Microsoft operating systems does not apply to the number of CORES, only for the whole processor.  So, with a standard license for Windows XP (any version) you can run it on two processors - if you have such a thing as a 64-core processor, it will run fine.  Myself I have a quad-core processor and it runs fine.

OK. Because i think that Windows XP 64-bits will cost more than 32-bits. So i have to add that in my budget  :scared:

Now i have to find a store where i could specify all the pieces i want...

Another question: i stuck to XP, because i heard a lot of thing on Vista (too new, too buggy, ...). But what is about in reality?
And i don't know if Poser6, Vue6, and Potoshop CS2 would work under Vista?

Actually, Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition cost me less money than XP 32-bit edition was listed at.  I don't know a French vendor for software but see what it costs, you may be surprised.

I hear many, many problems from people with Vista, particularly regarding OpenGL.  Some have good luck, some do not.  I think XP 64-bit is a much safer route (although not completely safe).  Just because any of those particular apps might work well on someone else's installation of Vista, does not mean they will work well for you.  Personally I do not plan to go to Vista for at least another year.

Yep you're right:

• Windows XP Pro 64-bits : 130€
• Windows XP Pro 32-bits : 140€
• Windows Vista Pro 31-bits : 140€
• Windows Vista Pro 64-bits : 140€

So the XP Pro 64 is the cheapest! I think i will go towards it. I will check some stores next saturday to see the prices for the configuration above. But i hope it will stay within my budget! I don't really want to sell my cats (btw, one of them is bigger than the others, perhaps i could have a good price...)
My budget is around 800-900€. It's all i spent for my actual PC, the screen, the scanner and print machine. For now i will only buy the PC, my 19'screen is good enough. I hope i will find this specs with XP pro 64 all for around 850€.

Well, if you want to keep the cats "close to home" perhaps you can skip buying food for a few weeks instead.  Not typical French cuisine but I hear they taste like chicken.

Scanner and printer might be troublesome. Not all scanners/printers have XP 64 bit drivers. You might want to check out what drivers are available for your current scanner/printer, and also check on driver availability if you're going to buy a new one.

My own scanner/printer/copier, a HP PSC 2110 All-In-One, doesn't have WHQL certified XP 64 bit drivers. The beta works fine, however, including scanning.

I just checked on Epson site, and my Epson Stylus CX3600 all-in-one has the XP 64 bit driver downloadable. So go on for XP 64!

The only app i use are: Poser6, Vue6 ProStudio, Photoshop CS2, Hexagon, Carrara5. I don't have any games in my PC. I've cleaned it up just after my big crash. So this 5 apps will be the only ones i will install on the new machine (off course with other little apps like IPB, the Tailor...)
I don't know if all these apps take advantage of the 64 bits or the quad core, but at least i think they must react well within it.

*"Well, if you want to keep the cats "close to home" perhaps you can skip buying food for a few weeks instead.  Not typical French cuisine but I hear they taste like chicken."*In this case, it will be very fat food!!

With my actual bldy machine, i'm not even able to have a textured display view with Hexagon, and so on for the displacement brush, it doesn't want to work*^*
I will definitely win by changing it.

Poser 6 will not take advantage of XP 64 bit - it's a typical Win32 application limited to 2 GB of memory use. Neither will it use multiple cores.
Vue6ProStudio will likely take advantage of multiple cores, as will Carrara 5 and Photoshop. It's unlikely that XP 64 bit will be an advantage for these applications.

On the other hand, XP 64 bit and multicore will allow you to run several apps together, providing enough RAM and processing power.

And yes, you will definitely win with a new machine. No doubt about it.

I'm planning too to upgrade to Vue6 Infinite later, and Infinite will use 64 bit.

Thanks a lot for all the good advices and the time taken to answer me! :thumbupboth:
As soon as i know the price, i'll make you know in this thread.

Well, more info now.

This morning, i went to a store that could build computer following the components you have in mind. I asked the vendor for a computer with all said above, he will call me at the end of the week to tell me about the price and delay.
But one thing surprised me: he told me that a Q6600 quad core CPU was about 500€. Browsing the net, i found that Intel raised down all their CPU prices a week ago. Here you could find a (french) article about that with the old and new prices for different Intel CPU compared.
And here the different prices i could find from different sites for this CPU.
As you can see, we're far away from 500€!! It rather seems that the correct price is about 300€, though some vendors have it about 500€ too. I guess the CPU supplier of the store i visited this morning sell it at this (huge) price.
I wonder if i could make the vendor build my computer with the CPU i would have bought from the net? If i could have a better price, hu... why not?

Something that surprise me as well, is that Intel told about 266$ for this CPU, but you could only found it around 270€. It doesn't follow the correct Euro exchange rate. It seems they are making huge taxes again!! (why are we always victims of someone??)

So, following the price this vendor announced to me, the computer i want will cost MUCH MORE i expected! I'll have to down the specs i asked. But i don't want to!
He told me as well that the memory prices raised up for summer. What is that system??
Following this idea, will all the components i went for be all pricey?

svdl - In Netherlands you could have these specs for about 850€, at the end of this week we'll see what is about the same specs in France...