Hi Everyopne,
 My problem is Carrara 5.1 Pro runs silky smooth, until I add a certain number of objects and then it slows down (while I'm working in the assembly room). So I'm wondering if I get a video card with more RAM, will this stop the slow downs? I'm working on some very complicated scenes and there's no way to cut them down, as they must be big and have lots of elements in them.

These are my video card specs:
256Mb PCIe x 16 ATI Radeon X600 HyperMemory w/TV-Out, VGA and DVI.

If you're viewing things fully textured, then a video card with more memory will help.  Otherwise, the slow down is probably due to you running out of system memory or even both. 

Upgrading video will always help OpenGL viewing one way or another. You may want to check system ram usage/CPU usage, at the point you see slowdowns, just in case the video is ok, but the system is slowing somewhere else. 

The amount of ram on that card should be fine unless textures are extreme(multi-layer etc.). Try zooming in to a scene and pan around, then from a distance. If the slowdown occurs at a distance alot more then up close, then a video upgrade would help more, but it also depends on the overall system speeds(bottlenecks) and scene complexity. Hope this helps.

to add to above:.. oops, 
**
quote:** "Try zooming in to a scene and pan around, then from a distance. If the slowdown occurs at a distance alot more then up close, then a video upgrade would help more...",

... that can work backwards with textures and OpenGL views sometimes and is more in line with geometry at a distance slowdowns etc. 

So basically where there is more to be seen(lighting, textures, number of objects etc), sometimes up close, sometimes at a distance, the more your video card will have to work(I always run out of edit time, lol). A faster video card will help a great deal. Sorry for the confusion.

If your hard drive is grinding away while you're working, you need more system RAM.  If you don't see all your textures, you need more video RAM.  Getting a faster CPU and video card helps greatly if you have plenty of RAM already.

Also try the "Interactive Renderer Settings", my system seems to respond MUCH better with OpenGL wireframes(smooth).

hi all, i hate to butt into your thread, but does any of this apply to final rendering from the render room? my system works lighting fast until i have to do a render with all the best settings (maybe i have overset, but i don't understand half of them (i mean is that photon torpedos there?). For example the job i am working on now:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2709371
that render took about 10 minutes at very low settings. I then made some edits to fix things, added some fog, cranked up the quality settings in the render room, fired a photon torpedo, and now the render is taking 9+ hours!!! albiet it looks a lot better.  my pc has been pegged at 100% all day. here is what the ms performance tab looks like, but i have never understood this panel:
 Totals                                        Physical Memory (K)
     Handles                       14481           Total                      2095848
     Threads                          619          Available                  1059920
     Processes                         62          System Cache               1168052

     Commit Charge (K)                             Kernel Memory (K)
     Total                      1535280            Total                       186948
     Limit                      4137740            Paged                       130456
     Peak                       2264776            Nonpaged                      56492

i have a nvidea 6600 GF with 128. i know its not much, but it does everything else just great! But if it would help this situation, i think i can get something better. or maybe i should just move to the macbook pro...dunno...thanks for listening!

Rendering speed depends on your CPU speed and not your video card.  It looks like you have plenty of system RAM for your scene.  A faster CPU will get the rendering time cut down some.  Or a render farm.

thanks so much for that confirmation. well, the new imacs are on order! i'll try the farm again...the last time i set up the nodes i did not see much improvement (but that was on another project). the lan here is slow and so are all the other machines! do u know of a tutorial on rendering...there are way too many options in that room and i need to better understand which ones to choose. thx.