Quote - > Quote - > Quote - the main reason to upgrade is for the power hungry IDL?

It's not that IDL is so much power hungry, Poser 8 itself is. But BB gave a fix for that and showed how to make Poser run at a lower priority so that it's not gobbling all your cpu cycles. Works like a charm :o). I'm a happy woman...lol.

Laurie

Yeah. I see so many people say they use 3 threads instead of 4. Running it below normal priority means full speed except when you need the computer. I have no trouble browsing or editing or compiling while a render is going at 100% CPU.

Before any of the service packs for P8 arrived, I tried running P8 on my five year old Toshiba with all four threads and the laptop actually froze up near the end of the render. I could not bail out or get the computer to shut off without unplugging it and pulling the battery out. Since then I have only rendered P8 with 2 threads. I have not attempted to bump it up to 3 threads. Maybe with the serial updates that have come down I could run P8 with 4 threads, but I'm a bit gunshy to even try it. And this is also a reason why I have not tried out Luxrender either. I seriously need a new laptop but there are other real life priorities.

"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate

Weapons of choice:

Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8