I want to improve Poser' 7's performance and am considering a new video card.  (Mine present card is a diamond HD2600 with 512 mem and it is too slow) I keep getting conflicting information on what card to buy and I don't know what to do.

1:  Some suggest a workstation card.  These are for CAD and graphics.  These cards apparently have a different instruction set that speeds things up.  The problem is no one (even at e frontier) is sure if Poser can use these instructions and as they are real expensive that would be a waste of money.

1. Video card memory.  I've been told that the video card memory holds textures.  I do run out of RAM memory for textures (I have the max Ram of 4 gig for XP) and if the card can hold textures then a large video ram is worth the money.  The question is how much and what kind.

3.  Most of the cards are for gamers.  I don't play games and just do video, poser and photoshop (CS3).  It doesn't make much sense to spend big bucks for a gamer card if a lower end card would do the job. 

1. I cannot find out for sure if any kind of new card would speed up rendering.  The most common answer is no, not directly.  However, a faster card with more memory could off load the processor and thereby speed up rendering.

There is an unbelievable array of video cards 4350, 4650,4750, 4850 (50 or 70)  There is DDR2, DDR3, GDR2, GDR3 and I think GDR5.   Memory goes from 256 to 1 gig.  There is Diamond, ATI, NVIDIA and on and on.  I simply don't want to buy a top dollar card that requires a new power supply if I don't need it.  (Since I also do video a HDMI jack would be useful) I still want great performance.

I would really appreciate some input.

Thanks

Fred

One man's top dollar is another man's junk. How much do you want to pay?

Video memory does hold textures, but only for when you're displaying them in real time, as in a game, or in Poser preview. You didn't say anything about Poser preview performance, just rendering performance.

The video card does not participate in rendering in Poser. It does not offload your memory, nor your CPU.

Item 3, the cards for gamers, is all about real-time rendering. They won't speed up Poser renders, only preview.

Item 4: You can be sure that no card would speed up rendering. That's why the most common answer is no, because that's correct. A faster card with more memory will not off load the processor at all. The processor is not needing help with drawing on the screen while rendering. It isn't doing any meaningful drawing at all, except the little bits that show up as each block is finished.

I just bought a eVga (Nvidia chipset) GTX 260 video card and not only is it amazing for gaming the realtime preview in Poser is great!  I did a quick 600 frame animation with walk cycle and other animation with 1 V3 and a Stonemason prop (Urban Sprawl) and hit the play button and it was in realtime no stuttering frames and all textures displayed properly (including transmapped hair) and I was blown away!   So to get to my point...  I'm thinking about rendering characters and such in realtime preview mode and then doing just a shadow pass and then compositing and honestly that looks pretty good for me!!  It does end up looking like a high end video game and not photoreal but still looks good and the artstyle of it is kinda cool!!

Gerard

No question, ghelmer, near real-time hardware rendering now is as good as software rendering was 7 years ago, although perhaps the Poser preview doesn't really do as much as it could. And the artstyle is cool.

Have you played the game Assassin's Creed? When you're crouching up on a parapet looking over all of Damascus, it's really incredible. I don't think Poser could actually handle rendering that many props and figures, let alone add the cool dusty-atmospheric effects that are there.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1824757

Here's a test render...  preview render took literally 1 second, shadow pass took about 2 minutes and it didn't turn out quite like I imagined after mixing the 2 layers...

Gerard

Oh and if anyone's interested the MAX Final Render Stage render is in my gallery and the link attached!!  Don't look at the rest of my gallery!!!  Really...  Large female frontal protruberances!!

Gerard

1. Workstation graphics cards for Poser are a complete waste of money. Those cards come with specialized libraries for high end 3D applications (3DS Max, Maya), and Poser does not use those libraries. The only advantage that they offer is better stability: their OpenGL drivers are better and the hardware has been tested before the card went into the shop. But the performance of a $4000 workstation card is about the same as that of a $200 consumer card.

2. Large video card memory is somewhat useful in texture shaded preview mode. On the other hand, reducing the maximum preview texture resolution also works. 256 MB on a graphics card is low end these days, 512 is mainstream, but 1 GB usually isn't worth the extra dollars - unless you're an avid 3D gamer.

3. You are completely right. You do want a reasonable 3D performer for Poser preview, and depending on your Photoshop version Photoshop can also make use of hardware acceleration on the graphics card. I'd say a GX260 is overkill. An nVidia 9600GT or 9800GT will do the job much, much better than your current ATI, and they're far more affordable than the GX260.
   The ATI high end cards (4850/4870) have a better price/performance ratio than the nVidia GX series, but they run far too hot to my taste (55 celsius idle, up to 95 celsius under load). The cards themselves have been designed to run at these high temperatures, but that heat will also warm up the southbridge chip on your mainboard - and if you have an nVidia based mainboard, that southbridge produces plenty of heat all by itself already. Putting a hothead of a graphics card close to that southbridge is a recipe for disaster - expect your southbridge to burn out within weeks.

4. The graphics card has no influence at all on render speeds in Poser. Period.
   There is a non-realtime plugin render engine for 3DS Max, Maya, and a couple of other high end applications that does use the graphics card, however. It's called RT2, and the render speeds it achieves are unbelievable: 50-100 times as fast as Mental Ray, even on a modest graphics card. Alas, it's around $500 for the render engine alone, and it's not available for Poser.

Thanks to all who responded.. I bought a ATI 4670 with with 1 Gig of DDR3.  (I had a HD2600)  The difference is outstanding.   It did help slightly on rendering but the buggest difference is in posing.  No longer do the figures jerk when moved.  Their motion is smooth.  The Poser dials now work without the usual delay.  Inserting content is much faster.  Apparently my old graphics care was a real bottle neck.

Thanks again
Fred