Recently I was here asking for advise in 'how can speed it up renders-still images' issuing the AtiX1600Pro-512MB graphic card and the new ones Nvidia8800GT-512MB and 768MB.
To my despair since I use a 64 bits XP with 4GB ram the Poser 7 sometimes is a big disapointment. Can't go trought and all that, most of you know about.The applic. does not takes advantage of your powerfull computer.
So I decide to write to  Smith Micro Software the Poser makers today and ask. They offer now a Bundle Poser 7* and Painter X.* Below you'll see my questions and theirs answers.

• those compatible with Wind XP Pro 64 bits? Or only one of it? Or none?
   I have read some forum where people get strange behavior from Poser when running 64 bits OS- also that is still problems with the applic. to recognized the system has more than 4 GB ram.
   BTW. Is Nvidia 8800 GT graphic getting all Poser 7 can do?
   Using 8 Gb in OS( with 64 bits Win Xp Pro )be used by Poser?
   Better use Vista Premiun 64 bits than XP 64 bits with Poser and Painter?

and they answer:

Thank you for your interest.  Poser 7 is a 32-bit program, you should be able to run it *under 32-bit compatibility mode on a 64-bit Windows XP system. * As for Painter, please check with Corel, as they are the developers of that program and so they would be the one who would know about specific technical details of the program.

32-bit programs inherently cannot read more than a couple of gigabytes of RAM on Windows machines.  Only 64-bit programs can go above that inherent limit.

The video card you use generally won't have a major impact on your renders unless those renders consist mostly of preview-rendered animations.  Firefly, the Sketch render engine and the Poser 4 engine all render entirely in software and make no use of the GPU whatsoever, so spending money on a high-end video card is wasteful for probably 75% of the work that people do.  That being said, if your work consists mostly of animations for which an OpenGL preview render is adequate, then a high-performance video card may be a good investment; a tenth of a second's decrease in render time per frame can add up over the course of several 900-1200 frame animations, and the longer the sequence, the more time you'll save with a faster card.  But this is only in that one particular case; for stills, sketches, toon renders or photorealistic video, the graphics card is not a major factor.  That being said, a graphics card that supports OpenGL 1.5 or 2.0 is required for Poser's hardware previews.

Poser works equally well on Vista and XP, although Vista's stringent security settings came sometimes cause issues.

I hope this helps!

Regards,

Matt
Smith Micro Software

NOTE: quoted from above.
**32-bit programs inherently cannot read more than a couple of gigabytes of RAM on Windows machines.  Only 64-bit programs can go above that inherent limit.
**
Said that, they are saying that is does not matter if you have 4 or 8 GB Ram, since Poser will not READ tHAT!  They said: Poser is a 32-bits application.
Now you tell me, isn't a total disaster?

This is one reason why I bought Vue6Inf because that is a 64 bit application, can load native Poser pz3's and use all the 8 Gig RAM I have!
I only use Poser now to set up my scene before lighting and rendering in Vue!

Hopefully the next version will be 64 bit compatible, if not they're just daft!

Regular 32 bit programs are limited to 2 GB, specially compiled like Poser 7 can use up to 3GB on Win32 (when you use the /3GB switch) or up to 4 GB on Win64.

Since I switched to 64bit OS I'm not getting "Out of memory" errors. I have 6GB of ram, and under 64bit OS poser can use up to 4GB, it seems that's just about right for most renders.

So good all we already know.
Now you: **thefixer  --  ** **where to get the free trial for the Vue 6- I was in their site but could not download it. Started to ask me the serial for the product, when I just wanted to try and see how is it.
**

**softcris:
**Just pm'd you!