I am a Carrara novice but systems are something I know a little about. The single greatest thing you can ever do to benefit your system is the add more memory. That's not only going to benefit C7 but anything else running on your system.

At this point in time I would never consider anything less than a 64bit system because of the fact you can go above the 3gb limit.

As far as a quad core vs a dual core system, now instead of two squares doing the work, you now have four on a render. probably going to make things a little faster.

The video card mainly effects things as they are redrawn on the screen. I don't think for working in C7 its going to make that much of a difference, but I will stand open to correction if soneone else has a different opinion. It will effect the playback of something like an animation I suppose but mostly its going to have an advantage for game play.

Given a choice with perhaps a limited budget I would spend money on processor and RAM.

Vampires