Attached Link: Poser 8 Render Lockup Thread

As part of my patriotic attempt to help kick-start the economy, I am considering building a new computer system in the near future. I usually build a new one about every 3 years, but I am thinking about a system optimized for Poser 8. The system I'm using right now is not getting along with Poser (see my Lockup During Render thread above).

In looking at some of the artwork and products here on Rendo, it certainly seems to be working pretty well for some folks.

For those of you for whom Poser is working smoothly, could you provide some details about the computer system you are using to run it? What processor, mobo, graphics card, RAM, etc, etc.

I am aware that Poser puts a pretty good strain on the average system - and it's not working well at all on mine, currently.

Thanks for any info you can provide!

 Well, let's start with what specs you have, and see what we can build up from there?  What are your current system specs?

Reading the other thread, the only thing you should even think about upgrading is your graphics card. Although you didn't say if it was an intel or amd quad core.  Your only option for an upgrade that would make any sense would be to go to an I7 or I5 processor giving you eight threads instead of four.
My guess is that its not your hardware that is causing your problems.

OK - The system I'm using currently is..

Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 CPU @ 2.4 ghz
4 Gigs (shows as 3.25) RAM
Abit 'Fatal1ty' MOBO
NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT Graphics Card
Two 320-Gig HDs

Built by me - not a pre-mfg system ;-P

It should be able to handle Poser, but I am having an issue with lockups during render.

Thanx!
Rod

Well there's no harm in getting a great new computer, but you already have one. Yours kicks my laptop's ass and my home desktop computer that is 4 years old. My laptop is a Dell D820 with Core 2 Duo, only 2GB RAM, and crappy Dell on-board laptop video. Yet I have no problems at all running Poser 8.

Your hardware specs indeed should be able to handle Poser. Crashes are usually the result of bugs in the video driver. Perhaps you already updated it, but if you haven't, try that.

Quadro FX370 video cards are more stable than the 7600GT

Hey, Bagginsbill!

Well, if mine kicks yours in the butt, I guess I don't really need to put all that money into the retail channel just yet ;-D

I have installed the updated driver from NVIDIA, and it didn't seem to help. I had thought about a format/reload, but from what others have said, they didn't have any luck with that (and it's a giant pain in the butt, anyway).

I've been looking around these forums, and trying a few things I've stumbled onto. Funny thing - I just tried checking the 'separate processes' (I think that's what it's called - having a senior moment.....), and setting the render thread to 1. It seems to be working at the moment. I've done a couple hi-res renders at around 2400 pixels (high) with no lockups. It's a lot slower, but a slow render is a helluva lot better than NO render!

I'll just keep plugging along - it's working on my HP Vista laptop ok, and it's working for the moment on this system. I'm sure SM is working on things (you may have an inside track on that one :-D).

I may go ahead and look at a video card upgrade, and I'll also snoop around on NVIDIA's site and see what I can dig up!

Thanks,
Rod

Hiya, indeed you have a way better computer than i have, after installing the hotfix and the sr1 Poser 8 is now very stable, it still crashes but not like before.

My computer specs are (i buit it myself too) :

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53Ghz
nVidia GeForce 9500GT 1Gb video card
4 Gb Ram
Windows XP Pro SP3
MOBO ECS GF7100PVT-M3, ChipSet GeForce 7100

Not very expensive, and it runs Poser without too much trouble.

Hmmm,  What power supply are you using,  perhaps that quad core is pulling more power than the PSU can provide or perhaps it's faulty.  (Poser 8 will push your CPU pretty damn hard)

Heat may be your enemy, too.

Some diagnostics and stress tests might  reveal something.

take care

Quote - Hiya, indeed you have a way better computer than i have, after installing the hotfix and the sr1 Poser 8 is now very stable, it still crashes but not like before.

Ditto for Me..

iMac with intel core duo 2.16 Ghz  ..  2Gig Ram  240Gig HD.

CPU:       Intel Xeon 5520 (it's the server version of the Intel Core i7 CPUs)
Ram:      12 GB Ram
GPU:       ATI FirePro 8700
HD:         2 x Western Digital Raptor
HD:         1 x Western Digital Veloci Raptor
OS:          Vista Business x64 (SP2)
Display:  NEC SpectraView 2690 Reference

Had luck, got all this discounted because it's used for my job.

Some personal thoughts - based on experinence and theoretical information from the web - not tested in a lab environment.

Most important - OS:
Vista 64 Bit manages up to 128 GB RAM
Vista / XP 32 only handles up to 4 GB (really available only approx. 3.5 GB)
If working with 32 Bit Vista and Poser8 you might have something like I did:
Simple scene with 3 x Victoria4 (no hair, a simple trikot as clothing), a simple room, a highres floor texture, one infinite light and GI on low settings. Firefly set to separate process, 4 threads, bucket size 128.
= max. overall system load on ram 3.7 GB
Result: on a 32 Bit Vista RAM swapping to harddisk happens -> slow down of everything.
Even putting more RAM into your box won't help because Vista / XP 32 will not use it.
You can reduce the bucket size to save some ressources but you might loose render speed then.
It might be better with XP because XP itself needs less RAM than Vista.
It might help to stop as much background apps as possible.
But better is to use a 64 Bit OS with more than 4 GB -> no RAM bottlenecks anymore.

CPU:
Not that important. All the current middle class or upper class CPUs are fast as hell. But you might want a min. of 4 cores. Most 3D apps (and Poser8 - the P7 multi threading  implementation was somehow strange) are already multi threaded and can utilize the cores.
If you want the best:
Intel: Core i7 (or i5) or Xeon 55xx line
AMD: I am not up to date with AMD models but they also have very fast CPUs at very reasonable prices

GPU:
Hardware: Not that important: All the current middle class or upper class GPUs are fast as hell. But take care. Nvidia sometimes changes the model names of old product lines to fit the naming of the new product lines. Here you might get slower hardware but the name indicates it's a faster one. Best is to go to www.tomshardware.com/charts/graphics-cards,1.html and check the grafics card charts there.

BUT:

The hardware might not be that important anymore but the software is. If you go for the "consumer" product line you normally get drivers that are optimized for gaming (simplified that means mainly DirectX optimization). If you got for the "professional" product line you get drivers that are optimized for work (simplified that means GL optimization). Drawback: Nvidia and ATI let you pay a lot more for the professional products:
E.G.:
ATI 4870 consumer GPU = street price around 200 Euro
ATI 8700 workstation GPU = street price around 800 Euro
The hardware is more or less the same.
There was a comparison of the consumer and workstation models on tomshardware some time ago (I don't have the link, sorry). Conclusion was, whenever they used the workstation model with the corresponding driver it was much faster in prof. 3D apps (Maya etc.). But they tested the preview not the render speed. As far as I know most 3D apps don't utilize the GPU for render processing. At the moment Newtek is rewriting Lightwave and I read on their website about the new CORE "... It is fully multi-threaded, multi-processor and GPU aware" what ever GPU aware might mean finally. I don't know what plans SM might have for Poser (P8 SR2, 3, Pro 2010 etc.) and if one get any advantage of the workstation GPU drivers.

Harddisk:
In my opinion: Take the fastest you can get and ask the hardware vendor if the mainboard can handle the speed. Poser has to load and save tons of textures and ascii files for everything it does. The faster the harddisk the better. As far as I know the Western Digital Velocy Raptors are the fastest desktop HDDs available today (and as always you have to pay for that).

Display:
Well I am lucky because my job includes softproofing questions. So I have a NEC SpectraView Reference display and I can adjust it with a professional calibration solution. I personally would never go back to a display that does not cover the adobe RGB gamut. The renders and photos show so much more colors, the gray tones are so accurate, the gamma curve can be calibrated to be perfect. It's really a complete different experinence than working with a low priced display. But those NEC display are really expensive if you have to buy them for the normal street price. If you want an awsome viewing experinence check for displays that are advertized with something like "wide gammut", "nearly or fully 100% adobe RGB", "nearly or fully 100% ECI RGB".

EDIT:
Forgot to mention EIZO (www.eizo.com/global/) they are also known for high quality wide gamut displays (I think it' s the ColorEdge line).

If you want a notebook, you might like to check DELL. The Precision M6400 notebooks can be ordered with a REG-LED display (they advertize it with 100% adobe RGB). In Germany you can't find them in the home user part of the DELL website. You have to select the business products. Maybe other vendors also offer something similar.

well mine is a 7year old p4 2.4ghz system and it runs P8 fine, ok it renders slowly but its fine

Hi Rod,

I'm no expert here, but here is my comp specs and a problem I was having and what I did to solve it.

I have a Dell with a Q6600 quad core @2.4 ghz
An ATI 4870 graphics card
8 Gigs ram.

When I was rendering an animation I kept getting out of memory notices at about 150 frames. I watched the ffrender.exe thing in my processes  and it was indeed slowly building up the memory use. Each time one frame rendered it did not completely release all the memory back to the system, so after awhile the memory use for ffrender grew very high. I went into the edit preferences in P8 and unchecked the render in a separate process, but kept the 4 thread setting. This then allowed the frames to be rendered in Poser.exe instead (no ffrender showing in processes) and after each frame was rendered it released all the memory back to the system. Poser.exe uses some ram to run but each time it finished rendering a frame the memory use went back down to normal Poser.exe use. (if this makes sense.) While rendering it still used all 4 threads too, but only one thread while not rendering.

I also went to Cnet and got a memory optimiser (free) and installed it, so if I am doing a very large render it automatically kicks in when my memory use gets to 75% and pushes it all off onto my swap file and out of the physical memory, this will help too for very large renders. I have only had one single render that I know of which actually got that large.

Dont know if this helps but worked for me.

Edit/ forgot to mention I rendered over 3800 frames in that animation using that method and had no problems.