My son is building me a super computer, since he just built himself a "gamer" 3d one... and mine is really making more and more signs that things are not right and failing... so timing is good I think....

I am making the brave move to VISTA OS, but only the 32 bit one, as he says the 64 is still buggy .... I wonder if that is why some folks get mad and go back to XP? He has been using Vista for 3 years and is a wizard with computers, software and hardware...so I trust him...and VISTA allows me 4 GIGS OF RAM!!!  He says his older software works fine on Vista... sooo what I am getting, and why I may be off line for a while (I am also getting my friend's computer up to par - well not a gamer but have to help her install stuff) so double the work.... gladly done but will keep me pretty busy and I think I will miss being able to do a Thanksgiving card/picture that I already "see" in my head....

oh well...that and having to call the plumber for the THIRD time for a leaking under the sink problem... is gotten me more stressed than normal..hoping my super computer will help those blues... Anyway... it is:

PC- 32 bit Vista OS
A 500 GB fast hard drive! (wowowow! :)) 
AMD 6000+ Duel Core CPU running at 3.5 ghz THAT IS WATER COOLED!!!
and no not kidding...I thought he was, as I am gulible, but he showed me photos! Holy cow, I am going into the space age!!! Water cooled HOT machine?!?! whooo!!
4 Gigs of DDR2 800 MHz ram
and Video: a G Force 8800 GTS Super clocked 320 ghz DDR3 ram
AND..for the first time getting away from a CTR monitor:  a Samsung LCD 22 inch widescreen monitor that has a 3000:1 whatsis that will make it very very smooth and bright!!
2 DVD/CD burner/writers in it (good my current DVD reader/CD writer is dying now).
lots of USB ports... on board full duplex sound...and all warranties of course... :)

I can't think that Vue 6 Infinite with the latest patch (just downloaded) would not be happy with THIS machine over my older one (that vue 5 still loves).... I read the vue 6 specs to my son before we started on this.

I do have to buy a new scanner as my OLD umax one just will not go with Vista, but I found drivers for my DYMO label maker, my Logitech  trackball mouse...and even though my 1-2 year old HP REALLY NICE photosmart printer does not say the driver on the CD is vista, and there is no download, the HP site still sells the model and says it is Vista certified and says Vista OS as a pre-req besides the other windows versions....  OH and he is going to make it look like classic windows to lessen the shock...I will have to get used to IE 7....but at least Rendo and DAZ will stop telling me I have the wrong browser! ;)

Also getting a commercial version of a less invasive anti-virus/firewall, etc. program my son has tried out for 3 years too (the free version) so I bought a multiple use one for us all... feels so darn good to get out from under Norton and McAfee!!

I figure it's about time that I get a really nice art machine as I close my store and move on to other "retirement" art... besides still trying so hard to get Vue 6 Infinite to come to life and work with lots of imported objects! :))

SOoooo see you "on the other side" hopefully with a lot of people in a vue 6 scene! My son will make sure I get all the main important programs installed and make sure all is working.... ooooo if not for the infernal plumber thing, I am really pretty wired!! :)

Lyne

Both my new desktop and laptops are 64bit with Vista Premium installed.  Vue works fine on both of them.

Yours does sound like a real whopper though - puts my 2 in the shade LOL! Good luck with it!

I mainly have gripes about the os itself - it can be a real pain in the bum :(

WEEEEE, new computers are FUN!..... i like the fact that yours is water-cooled.... unfortunately, i had a very small budget and couldnt afford the nice water-cooled kind.... my brother's working on building mine.... and, like you, the timing couldnt have been better.... my old one died a few weeks ago (after i'd placed my order with my bro)....  here's the specs on the one that's coming....

XP pro 64bit SP2C
MSI K9N SLI Platinum AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard (sorry, copied that one off the website)
Antec True Power Trio TP3-650 ATX12V 650W Power Supply with Three 12V Rails
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2 Processor
G.Skill 2GB 240-pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory (=4GB)
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721075KLA330... 750GB  7200 RPM SATA 3.0Hb/s Hard Drive

video: ATI X1300Pro dual head (digital only) that bro removed from a PC due to incompatibility with Linux.
one of the 2 17" monitors when he sends the computer.  DVI, 1280x1024, built in speakers.  (the second one i get when he's done using it)

i just cant wait til he ships it LOL.

Sounds sweet Lyne! Good to see you again! Looking forward to some images off that new rack!!

Lyne, I'm so glad to hear you're so excited about this new machine, you sound like a little girl waiting for her Xmas present. I'm also glad to haer all is alright for you, except for that darn plumber, and all ended well with those scary fires.
What is this wonderful anti virus? I'd love to say good bye to Norton too!

Greate machine, couple sugetions.
No point to have Vista if you not using 64 bit.
If you going to have 64 bit, increase RAM - more RAM - more complex textures you can have.
And if possible get one more hard drive, external, to back up your work.
Good luck with your screaming PC. Looking forward to see your new work.

Well...actually... she says politely there is a point...32 bit is backward compatible with most hardware and 99% software so ....

"The Other Side".... I LIKE Vista, however I have found some nifty things to help my eye strain... found if I run it in the Windows Standard I can make the blinding white backgrounds of explorer, my mail program, note pad etc, all a nice muted white/gray color!! Nice on the eyeballs! :))  and of course on my 22 inch LCD...wooo hoooo!!! I was not used to wide screen... PUSH IT BACK FROM YOU....my son said... hee hee! Details I never dreamed of seeing... gosh my TV looks blurry and dull now... oh oh!!! ;)

We did take the extra 2 gigs of super ram OUT because good old Microsoft STILL has an OS that will not USE the 4 gigs of ram if you are using Vista 32 bit....and the 64 bit for the 4 gigs of ram is SO not backward compatible....so here I am with half my OLD programs installed....I mean REALLY old programs....and they are running fine... (got lot's more installing to do)...

AND!! Vue 5 Infinite runs in OPEN HARDWARE GL LIKE A BAT OUT OF ****.... rendering a pic that took 3-40 minutes on old machine took 6 minutes...been pushing and testing all over... and actually decided not to retrain myself or bother with vue 6 infinite as I am very relaxed with vue 5 (even more so now) and I have so much content, why deal with 6 when it will not use ALL the ton of 5 content (plants and objects mainly) I have all set up in 5.... I can't wait to see what the teeny bit glitchy eco system in vue 5 does now that I have this super fast "everything" ....and of course knowing my vue 5.11 LOVES my Poser 6.3 just fine.... my 4 window vue updates truly simultaneously in open gl!! :))

I don't care that I had to go to (display properties) - "windows standard" to get the "gray application background" enabled ....actually it's the bottom "window" choice to do this, - the a funky or rough looking explorer is no big deal...more important to save my eyes than "glitz" and everything else in programs and web sites looks BEYOND GORGEOUS AND 3D-ISH.... !!

I LOVE IE7.... it's pretty, easy to use and it's native pop up blocker is SO EASY to use, (now that google has gotten really nasty invasive - only my own opinion) and then there is the BUBBLES screen saver everyone likes... LOL!! Pretty... and hypnotizing!! :)

I find vista HELP really honestly helpful now, and things very visual and easy to find... even dyslexic.. of course my wizard son who is there to guide me through all the things with the new interface and also with the new anti-virus we use that is commercial, up and coming compitition to the two invasive main ones on the market - (boy does it find those spy cookies fast!!) program that covers every single thing for me.... and on and on...

I am HAPPY with my sleek black hot machine and I love learning to get around in it... Poser 6 now loads it's single 90 gig runtime (from a cold boot) in 3 minutes, that is sooo fast from before... vista LEARNS stuff like xp was supposed to....and when I had a major lock up of both poser (when I was test pushing it - third dressed lady was the killer- LOL) and task manager even locked up, the system recovered really easy with a restart...and funny... the poser ladies - all three of them NEVER "went white" like when poser says it can't handle the memory/texture stuff...just don't try rendering three...but that is poser's limits!

All in all this new ram is soooo advanced, my hard drive so fast, my video so hulking, my duel core cpu... it all helps shave hours off my "drumming fingers waiting on our fav software times!" My "Serial ATA" hard drive (greek to me, my son said just call it an SATA drive (not listed in my original post) of course helps all too....now to get a FIRE WIRE external for my back up - better and bigger than the usb external I have now....

I can not speak to any software above what I am using...I have no need for vue 6 nor poser 7, so am very happy where I am, with the added power and pretty LCD monitor... oh my GOSH, everyone's art looks 1000's times better even! LOL!!!

One happy Vista user! ;)

Lyne

PS: One thing I forgot to put in my "other side story" I will paste below, is that my son said he NEVER makes a machine where the main person is not the ADMINISTRATOR (unless it is a child's machine)....I heard a lot of how you have to be that for some functions in vista...so aside from a couple of oldie but goodie programs installing twice - all things are fine...or I get a little note are you sure you want/can do this, - I go yes...and it will do the task... I am "king...er Queen" of my machine and it knows it! ROFL!! :))

I take it from your last post that you now have your hands on the machine :-)

A 64 bit OS lets you use more than 4 GB of RAM, so you can run more 32 bit things at once, or you can run a giant 64 bit application. Or any combination. Isn't Vue Infinite a 64 bit application? (I don't know because I haven't got it yet, the Personal Learning Edition is seeping in from the torrents as I type.) If so it could use 64 GB of RAM if you have it.

I am lusting for a 30" monitor that is on sale here in Canada, I think it uses the same display panel as the Apple Cinema 30". It's 4" bigger than my TV!

Sorry my avatar is in the same pose as yours, it's from another site and it's supposed to be, er, my cat Dolly. (It's really just the DAZ Millennium cat.)

From what my son said, it takes the 64 bit OS for the additional ram, and if HE says the 64 bit Vista is "still glitchy" then that is it for me. He is soooo amazing (yes, even if he were not my son! ;) with the tech world, he knows what his "older" Mom needs and my machine is soooo fast now.... I know too that in the future when the 64 bit OS gets more stable, he may upgrade me and my ram...and I might then try vue 6 infinite again (yep, thinking that is the one that wants all the ram and the 64 bits).... so I feel pretty well cared for... 

He built the machine and brought it to me and would not leave till we were sure vue and poser were happy, and I could get around...and then I have been on the phone off and on for a few days while I run into things to learn, and he is so patient with me! I am one lucky Mom!! :D 

OH LOL... ANY kitty avatar is just "the best" IMHO! :))

oh... my... maybe I should eat something?? I keep forgetting... LOL!!

Glad you are happy with Vista. So many people have troubles with this OS. So I decided to go with XP Pro x64 and this is remarkably stable. I really can recommend it, though you have to take care, that you get drivers for all your devices.

I have XP Pro 64 bit also. I also have an XP Pro 32 bit machine, the old one. One of them usually has drivers. Happily, mostly the 64 bit one.

I just reinstalled vue 6.5 infinite...and it is whaling along FAST!! Now just to try some render settings...NO GRAIN ALLOWED in clouds and water... so will take some experimenting...and getting over a flu I caught from HAVING to have a plumber come fix things...darn! .... but sure got the machine FOR vue SIX for sure!!!! yeaaaaaa!!!!

It's always nice to get a new machine! ;D

I have to agree, though, with Geekatplay that 64-bit is the only way to go for Vue. I run XP64 Pro  on a quadcore AMD Opteron setup with eight gigs of ram. It is not only rock-solid, but backwardly compatible with EVERYTHING I've thrown at it. Sure, I had to update a few drivers, but one has to do that from time time, anyway.

Regardless, enjoy your newly-found speed.

I'm running Vue 6.5 on an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - four 2.4 GigaHertz cores - with 8 GB of RAM. Wiindows XP 64 bit. Water cooled, sorry. Koolance Exos-LT cools the CPU, which is almost half of the heat budget.

My best Render Cow (besides the main one) is the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 overclocked from 2.4 to 3.0 GHz with a Scythe Ninja as cooling. (Ninjas are cool, and silent. Unfortunately the rest of my computers more than make up for it.) It's almost as fast as the main Quad, possibly because it's running Linux instead of Windows XP. I have two identical 1.83 GHz HP Cows, I plan to install Linux on one and compare.

My worst Render Cow is the Intel Pentium 4 which at 3.0 GHz is about 1/7th the Core 2 Duo at the same clock speed. Possibly because it has no (0.5GB) memory. I'm going to check if I can upgrade the CPU and memory. If not I'll build another Linuix Cow.

The Render Cow licence allows five, I'm taking full advantage. :-)

Note: if you can run your cows under Windows, do so. I have to manually restart the Linux Cows after each job because the old ones don't close the network socket. If this bug was fixed I'd buy a lot more licences, but since the program isn't supposed to run on Linux I just count my blessings.

I just hope I don't need that kidney I sold to pay for Vue Infinite. Just kidding! But I wonder if "Infinite" is the price.