P7 is working great for me and I really want to keep it that way, i.e. unbroken.

But, P8 looks to have a better renderer and better multi-core functionality so I would like to increase the quality and speed of my images.

Can I keep P7 on my c drive and install P8 to an external drive without any problems? So I stick P8 on a Seagate USB drive and port over my runtimes to P8. When I want to use P8, i just plug in the drive and load it up and when I don't want to, I just don't plug the external HD in and P7 works as it does right now.

So 2 things i want to know:

1. Will my proposed setup work without any issues? I heard there are some issues like V4 doesn't port over when you import runtimes to P8?

2. Is the improvement in the P8 Firefly worth the upgrade? I don't go too crazy with lights, and hardly use reflections and shadows but I would use these features more if they rendered quicker (as in a few minutes for a 1000px image). The new renderer is all I really care about at this time. Maybe i should wait a while for a few service packs so the bugs are ironed out?

Thanks for your time.

Poser 7 and 8 can work off the same drive; upon installation, different folders are created. I have copies of P7, PoserPro, and P8 coexisting without problems.  Why not just create external runtimes.  It will remedy the issue of 'porting' files from one version to the other.  Yes, P8 is faster but it is not the incredible zippy rendering you are anticipating.

You could, if you wanted to, have every version of Poser installed to the same drive, internal or external, you could have each version of Poser installed to a different drive (if you can afford 8 drives), they'll all work the same as they do on their own with no other version installed.

If you use the same render settings in Poser7 & Poser8 then you'll see Poser8 going faster, BUT add in the new settings like IDL & it'll sometimes go slower than Poser4.

 The placing of Poser doesn't matter. I have all my poser versions, from Poser 4 and onwards, on the same - external - drive. They coexists happily without interfering with each other.

You can even start P7 and P8 in diffrent windows and run them parallel.

For V4 and the other DAZzers, if you copy the foler runtimelibraries!DAZ into your p8 installation everything will work fine.

Quote - You can even start P7 and P8 in diffrent windows and run them parallel.

For V4 and the other DAZzers, if you copy the foler runtimelibraries!DAZ into your p8 installation everything will work fine.

I run both P7 and P8 at the same time to see how clothing I create react in each version

OK, thanks for the info, so P7 and P8 will work fine together.

Now, I want to know a little more about render quality in P8. If I use the exact same settings between P7 and P8 and then render, the pictures should come out identical? I assume P8 is probably something like 20% faster...

Are there any good threads, blogs or websites that do some render comparisons? testing the guts of the P8 Firefly?

Thank you.

 I don't have any trouble running Poser Pro from hard drive and Poser 7 from removable hard drive.

( Everytime I move or rename the runtime containing the V4 or M4 figure and morph content runtimes, I run the BAT files provided under the runtimelibraries!DAZ forlders, just to be sure that the morphs work correctly. )