So actually, I'm thinking of buying a new computer, and I would like some advice on what to look for and how to customize it best to suit Vue's needs.  Any suggestions, advice....

My intelmac seems to work well with vue. love esther

I like ASUS motherboards, personally.
my new rig, for gaming, would be aswesome for Vue (which I plan to do when get more cash gathered and can upgrade my 2nd Vue5Infinite license to V6I, so I cna scene build on one PC, render on other, at whim)

-Asus P5B-Deluxe motherboard, this should be useable with quad core Intel CPUs too.
-Antec 900 gamer case (VERY cool as in cold, case and huge cpacity, can take 6 hard drives, and 3 DVD sized drives)
-CPu E6550 2.33 GHZ Core DUo2, CPU.
-Nvidia 6800GT vid card.
-One 400 gig drive at present, another coming soon ( I will NOT use Maxtor drives, hate them, after 3 failed in a short period for me 2 years ago)

This rig renders about 2 1/2 times faster than my P4 3GHZ art PC :)

You can get some ides from this post:[

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2707516](http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2707516)

Here are the benchmark numbers for different system with VI (838 score is mine and it it's not a mac..LOL...Mike m)

http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3344&start=0

Just upgraded mine last week, very similar to Silverblades, I did this upgrade specifically for Vue, it will run on less but I like to use the "Poser Shader Tree" which needs a big pc with plenty of RAM.

Asus P5K-E Mobo, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Nvidia 8600GT graphics, Antec 900 case, 650 Watt PS, 8 Gig RAM, 2 x 320 Gig HD's in Raid 1 array [mirrored so no data loss if one dies] and against my better judgement but better than I thought it would be, Vista Ultimate 64!

Just last week i've got all the new parts for my new PC - it's done now and running with Vista Ultimate 64bit - and it's running great so far.

The specs:

• Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 Mainboard for Dual Core 2 / Quad Core 2 (prepared for coming up 45nm CPUs) - in my opinion a very good board, with a silent pipe around the CPU to keep it cooler, dual BIOS for safety and backup reasons, in case of a BIOS crash it can recover from the copy by itself ...
• Intel QuadCore Q6600 CPU best price/perfomance (if you want to use it for 3D, video editing and stuff like that, 4 CPUs are beating any Dual Core at least by the factor 2 - and for games it's top-notch, too ! )
• 4x  1GB DDR2 RAM sticks (Dual Channel) - 800 Mhz
• Graphicscard Nvidia 8800 GTS 256MB  
  ( the 8800 GTS/256 MB got best price/performance rating - the 8500/8600 versions compared are quite slower and got much less shaders - 32  shaders with 8500/8600 and  96 shaders with 8800 GTS/256MB - so if you don't need DX10, and you still got  a 7800/7900 version, you don't really need a 8500/8600 ... ).
• 2x  500 GB SATA-II  harddisks
• 1x  250 GB IDE harddisk
• 1x DVD-RW read/writer

Re-Installed Vue 6 Infinite - at startup screen of Vue you can read now "64bit" next to the e-on symbol, which emphasizes the special funtionality and support running it on a 64bit operating system - and you really notice the strength of 4 CPUs.

Only little problem is a light jerky gizmo movement while rotating or moving it.

Graphic card driver right now is 163.11 - the newest beta Vista driver i could find, but no WHQL, incase you're looking for that ...
If you really want WHQL, than 162.50 is the one for now ...

Kilanor: I have that Gizmo problem too! Making the Gizmo's a but larger helps a bit but it's still not perfect!
Another issue I have is my tool tips on the left and top tool bars don't show, the tips in the main windows do though so it's a bit odd!!
I've raised it at both e-on and Nvidia but can't find anywhere to report it for Vista in case it's that!!

Overall though Vista runs nice, I've switched system restore off though 'cos that was eating disc space!!

thefixer what do you mean when you say tool tips.  I am little confused...:)

Iloco: You know when you hover your cursor over the tool bars on the left and top, you get a pop up that tells you what they are, well those pop ups don't!!  [LOL].
It's not a biggie 'cos I kinow what they are anyway, it's just that it should be there and isn't!!

Gotcha now.   Maybe its a 64 bit thing.  Is show tool tips checked in options.....?
  I will check it out this week when I get my XP 64 bit installed.  Had to get a new copy as first one was cracked. :)

My new computer is built on an Asus Commando MB
 XP pro 32 bit,  Will add XP Pro 64 Bit this week on a second partation and dual boot.
8 Gig Corsair ram for use with 64 bit
Msi 7900 over clocked 512 mb Viedo card.
 Dual Quad core Q6600 Intel processor.
600 Watt PS
Lian Li Tower.
Plextor DVD burner
DVD_Rom
22 inch LCD View Sonic Monitor

Don't know what's causing it, I've raised tickets at e-on and Nvidia in case it's a driver issue, according to e-on they have it on a 64 bit Vista and it works ok but they don't have the Nvidia 8600GT to try so it's a mystery for now!

I had thought of re-installing Vue in case it didn't go in right but to be honest I can't be arsed for something that's not that big a problem!

Well, thefixer - i only got that little jerky gizmo to report, running Vue 6.5 and Vista Ultimate 64bit.
The Tool-Tips are working fine - i get all of them displayed without a problem - and our PCs are pretty the same hardware ... Q6600, 8xxx graphics cards, at least 4GB RAM ...
System restore is a feature i really like - it helped me a lot of times with XP, so with Vista it's even better done - and to spare storage space i only use it for the partition with Vista installed - for all other partitions i've turned it off, since it only happend to me in past times with Windows itself and no problem with other data on the other partitions ... so the storage space it needs only gets taken from the Vista-OS partition. which doesn't hurt.

thefixer,  did you reinstall Vue from scratch, since there seems to be a difference between Vue in 32bit and 64bit mode ??
Do you see the "64bit" signature in the Vue loader window displayed ?

Another reason for this tool tip problem could be either some difference in the graphic cards between 8600 and 8800 driver support, or what i've done, too, since i've installed Vista 64bit - i've grabbed every available important Vista update using the update function of the Vista system.

Also, there was an issue earlier with XP and Vista running them on a Intel multicore CPU.
There are patches/updates for this, too. I've got that info following the blog of one of the MS Flightsim team members. Maybe that would help too. Here's the info blog and the update links are included there:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/07/16/windows-update-xp-and-vista-for-intel-multi-core-processors.aspx

ROFL, I was just coming back here to give an update, the tool tips are working now!! Go Figure!! [LOL].
I found a duplicate Vue entry in my Firewall, originally when I installed I didn't know that Vista had 2 Program Folders, one for 32 bit proggys and one for 64 bit proggys, so I installed it in the same place as my Poser progs which was of course, wrong!!

So I reinstalled Vue in the right place after uninstalling from the wrong place but there was still this entry in my firewall for the 32 bit one, so I'm making a big assumption here that when I deleted a dual entry that I found relating to the 32 bit one from my firewall it solved the issue!!

Of course I could be well wrong but I don't care, they're working and that's all that matters!!

Nice to hear, it's working now - and yes, if you're new to Vista 64bit, you might not notice right away, there are two "Program" folders, 32bit and 64bit ... I've noticed this fact earlier, while adding certain other programs, before i even got to the re-installation of Vue 6.

The jerky gizmo, hopefully, will be fixed in future patches ... until then, i can live with it. Since the render/prerender times are much faster now, i can spend more time on the gizmo positioning  ;)  ...

Quote - Just upgraded mine last week, very similar to Silverblades, I did this upgrade specifically for Vue, it will run on less but I like to use the "Poser Shader Tree" which needs a big pc with plenty of RAM.

Asus P5K-E Mobo, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Nvidia 8600GT graphics, Antec 900 case, 650 Watt PS, 8 Gig RAM, 2 x 320 Gig HD's in Raid 1 array [mirrored so no data loss if one dies] and against my better judgement but better than I thought it would be, Vista Ultimate 64!

Great minds think a like! ;)

LOL, yea but my tool tips have disappeared again!! Don't know what's going on with that, at least I can live with it!!

Doh!
wel least this version is in general much more stable, sitll crashed one me though

I went back to the WHQL Nvidia driver 162.50 - the jerky gizmo seems to be less jerky - and my tool tips are still working fine ...