I have a 64 MB Radeon card. I am trying the Vue xStream personal learning edition.

It's virutally unuseable in my machine. I've run Bryce with relatively decent results. But Vue........ it brings my whole machine to a crawl. A simple scene with water and one tree and a mountain... and I'm frozen.

Here are my system specs:

Card name: ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M Series
     Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
        Chip type: ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M Series (0x5955)
         DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
       Device Key: EnumPCIVEN_1002&DEV_5955&SUBSYS_0300107B&REV_00
   Display Memory: 64.0 MB
     Current Mode: 1280 x 800 (32 bit) (60Hz)
          Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
  Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200

You don't have Memory !

I have 1 Gig of RAM on my system. Is that what you mean?

Is RAM what determines how well Vue runs, or is it VRAM.

More RAM or VRAM, that is the question.

More ram - Vram is good for on screen display/item manipulation within vue's working area.

1g is no where near enough  - 64 for vram is not good either.

i want to make movies with lots of trees and water (similar to what is in the demo video for Vue...of course not that extensive, but simlar. I am also using Max so I'll have animated characters that I'm making inside fo the Vue scenery.

I don't care AS MUCH about render time, as I do the ability to manipulate objects inside of the VUE interface.

If I up my RAM to 2 Gigs, do I have a chance of being able to move things around freely in Vue without major slowdown????????? Please advise!!

Your manipulation problems are sue to insufficient video card memory.

You'll need to play with both Vue's and your card's display options.
One thing that should help is to switch to wireframe only.

As far a system memory is concerned, like just about all 3D related programs, the more you have the better you'll get on.
Remember that if your using Vue in integrated mode, Max will consume memory as well as Vue, which will affect the size/complexity of scene you'll be able to deal with compared to Vue or Max alone.

**nruddock

Well, I can try for wireframe only but it seems like I'm screwed unless I get a new Laptop. I can buy a good video card for a desktop, but I do most of my work on the road.

How much RAM and VRAM do you guys have (assuming  you work with VUE).

**

4 GB RAM
256 MB VRAM

I'd suggest working on a desktop instead of a laptop... If you can't you can always use a lot of layers and turn them off when you're not working with them.

System RAM : 1.5GB
VRAM : 128MB

I find it fairly easy to consume this, but it'll have to do until I move to a 64 bit system.

I found I had (oddly enough) turn off Vue's OpenGL polygon limit option to cure jerkiness with my card (plus the usual fiddling with the driver options).
Laptops generally have poor OpenGL implementions.

Make sure you have the latest video drivers for your laptop as well. Some OEM's don't provide drivers, you might have to hack the desktop drivers to get them to work on the laptop.

XP x64 - 8gRam - 768 Vram