Ok, I admit I have cheated a bit. My company asked me if I needed a new PC, and I said yes... Well, actually it's true, but the fact that Poser and Vue were already pushing the limits in the old one has been a decisive argument in my answer....  :biggrin:

Anyway they provided me with an Acer Travelmate 6593G, that is, Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB of RAM, and a nice 1680x1050 display with an Ati Mobility Radeon HD3470 graphic card. 

What do you think about it? And first of all, how should I configure the render engine? External process with two threads? (I am using Poser Pro)

Giorgio

My brother does not agree with the Acer brand.  They are not very reliable machines.

Quote - My brother does not agree with the Acer brand.  They are not very reliable machines.

Really? Well, we'll see.... Not my problem, anyway. Obviously I made regular backups of my data, and if the machine develops a problem all I have to do is to return it to my IT department and ask for another one. Managing warranties and defects is their job.

Giorgio

External renderer, 4 threads. And please, please run a 64 bit OS.
If you use only 2 threads, one core gets to render the upper half of the scene, the other one gets the lower half. If the upper half is far more complex to render (e.g. transmapped hair + raytraced reflections + soft raytraced shadows in the right upper corner) than the lower half, the second core will sit idle once the lower half has finished rendering.
If you use 4 threads, the surface will be divided into 4 parts. Once a part has been rendered, the core that had been rendering that part will devote all its attention to another part. Same image as before (complexity in the right upper part, less complexity in the other parts) - one core will probably be dedicated to rendering the right upper part, while the other core will render the other 3 parts, resulting in a shorter total render time.

It would have been more intelligent to assign by bucket - once a core/thread completes a bucket, it'll get a fresh one to render - that would be a far more efficient use of multicore CPUs. But alas, that's not the way Firefly is built.

Maybe something for Poser 8....

Quote - External renderer, 4 threads. And please, please run a 64 bit OS.

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I am stuck with Vista Business 32 bit and I cannot change it, but I'll set the threads to 4.

Giorgio