So, I got my dead desktop back with a new lease on life, with a brand'spankin'-new (reading off the box) G41MT-D3 Gigabyte motherboard, (reading from the tax invoice) Intel Dual Core E6500 "Misc Bits" and 2 gig of DDR3 RAM. I suppose I should be cheering, except I can't help but think that having on-board graphics really isn't working in my favour, since after a render or two I get out-of-memory errors from Poser Pro 2010. This I attribute to not having a dedicated graphics card with dedicated memory.

Right or wrong, oh great hardware wizards? I am so out of my depth, here.

Anyway, I'm having a look at graphics cards and the spec pages are bewildering, with great emphasis on game performance. I'm not running any games: I want something that will get rid of those memory errors (which i didn't get before when I did have a graphics card with dedicated memory).

Apparently, this board has a PCIExpress slot. So, my AGP cards are useless. I'm looking at cards, but what's what? I would like to stay with NVidia only because it's a technology I trust, but I can be swayed... perhaps. Options:

EVGA 8400GS Video Card 512MB NVIDIA

ASUS NVidia GF EN7300GS 256MB PCIe Graphics Video Card

NVIDIA XFX GTS 8600 8600GTS PCIE Video Graphics Card

Asus NVidia Geforce 9600GT 512MB Graphics Card PCIe

Open to suggestions, here.

If you are runing out of memory, upgrade your ram, not your graphic card ...

2 Gb is just not enough for poserpro 2010, 4Gb is a minimum  ...

I'm still running WinXP Pro, which I believe has a 3 gig limit in terms of addressing RAM directly.

Besides, why would I NOT get the errors when I had a graphics card (instead of integrated graphics) and now I do? I was running Poser Pro 2010 at the time. Never had an error. Then, the motherboard died. Now, with integrated graphics, I get the error. Cause and effect?

C'est logique ;)

Your integrated GC use the ram of your motherboard .

For example, you have 2 Gb of RAM and an integrated GC who use 512 Mb, then it still 2048-512=1536Mb of RAM for the system.

Here yes, yes you can upgrade for an external GC, but you can also upgrade your RAM, XP Pro use 3.5 Gb of 4 if i remember ...

Now i use Win7 32 ( not 64 cause RAM error ), it use 3.5 GB of my 8GB, and run faster than XP64.

Je te remerci, Anthanasius. Et oui, c'est logique - t'as raison, j'en suis d'accord, mais il me manque de fric (poignon). Donc, est-ce que ca coute moins chere, d'acheter plus des RAM ou bien un graphics card, a ton avis?

I can only highly recommend you to upgrade to a 64 bit environment and pack as much ram into it as possible.

I had a lot of problems on WIN 32 bit with 4 GIgs, since i am on 8 GIG and Win64 i have never had Poser crashing ever, even when loading six or seven M4s and V4s....

its really worth the investment....

I've been looking at spec sheets and apparently this:

Gigabyte GA-G41MT-D3motherboard supports a 64-bit OS. and so does the:

Intel® Pentium® Processor E6500processor (sorry - copied and pasted all that). So, it's a matter of obtaining a copy of WinXP Pro 64 bit? The copy I have is 32-bit, SP3. How do I get 64-bit? Is this a costly upgrade? 

I've priced RAM... seems cheap enough to upgrade. This motherboard my tech experts put in will only support 4 gig of RAM. So, besides upgrading the OS to 64-bit and buying another 2-gig of RAM, would getting a PCIE graphics card with 512 - 1gig of RAM make much of a difference?

Amazon sells the upgrade for about 170 Dollar, but i am sure there are cheaper ways. If you have a valid license of Win 7 32 bit, you might approach your distributor if you cannot change this to 64 bit. I believe the Pro License shall include both licenses 32 bit and 64 bit doesnt it ?

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-7-Professional-Upgrade/dp/B002DHGM50

I don't have Windows 7, only Windows XP 32-bit. Upgrading to Windows 7 here in Oz is prohibitively expensive: AUD$400 to go from Vista Business to Windows 7 Pro, for instance. Costs as much as a bare-bones system, fer pete's sake!

I'm hoping that with my valid Win XP Pro 32-bit licence I might be able to sidegrade for a nominal sum...

Quote - .

2 Gb is just not enough for poserpro 2010, 4Gb is a minimum  ...

on their site it says 1 GB mimimum and 2 GB recommended

Quote - > Quote - .

2 Gb is just not enough for poserpro 2010, 4Gb is a minimum  ...

on their site it says 1 GB mimimum and 2 GB recommended

Yes, if you just want to start the program, leaving it resting in your background not loading any models or doing anything with it :)

realisticly Poser need about 300 meg or so itself just to load. the rest depends on what you load and with which rendersettings you render...

If you want to use Poser 8 or up to it's potential, you shall have a couple of GBs of Ram avaliable for it...

just my expirience....

Ya dont need Windows 7 pro, windows 7 home premium should be ok if you are not connecting to a Windows Domain network.  By that I mean somethign along the lines of a company network where you have a username, password and domain to log onto the network.  As opposed to the normal home requirements of a local username and password.

The home premium upgrade is considerably cheaper than 7 pro.

I use home premium 64bit with 6gb of ram and it works like a dream.

John

Thanks, Fugazi. The more I look at this system, the more I realise I've been sold down the river by those IT "experts" who repaired my machine: the MB supports no more than 4 gig RAM. That's it. I did find a genuine copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit for AUD$117, which is definitely affordable, but to what end? I'm only addressing 4 gig. Ever.

So, in the light of this limitation, another 2 gig RAM and a dedicated (not integrated) graphics card? Any point to go 64-bit anything?

Going from XP to 7 will be an improvement even if you only have the capacipty to use 4gb of ram.

XP 32bit will use somewhere near 4gb, but ir doesnt manage it very well due to 32 bit restrictions.  & 64bit has a much improved memory management system.

Besides, when you do upgrade your mobo in the future you will be all set up and ready with your 64bit os :)

If I can recommend a card it would be a geforce 240gt.  An excellent and inexpensive card with 1gb of dedicated ram.  But in all honesty any graphics card based on recent(ish) architecture would be good.

I use the gt240 because it has nearly 100 CUDA processors, which I am sure poser does not use, but my beloved 3d coat does :) so it speeds that up nicely.

Whichever card you go for I would plump for the most recent architecture you can afford, the GT240 for example is only a little more expensive than the geforce 9 ranges, but is slightly faster and supports a few more features.  It's just a minor future proofing thing.

Don't listen to IT experts though, that's the first mistake :) unless it's me of course.  But only cos I have 22 years in the business and don't stand to make any comission off ya :)

John

RobynsVeil, what is your budget for the graphics card?

There are benefits of going 64bit even with less than 4GB physical RAM. What most people don't realize is that the 32bit/64bit difference applies to the virtual address space available to programs, not physical memory in the machine. There are 32bit server versions of Windows that can use >4GB physical RAM, while a 64bit application running on a machine with 1GB RAM can allocate 32GB of memory.

I with the others if you are contemplating OS upgrade.  Besides, Microsoft will be discontinuing XP support rather soon.

I use Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on both of my home machines. One machine is a duel core CPU with 4 gigs of ram which is similar to yours and it does very well. I also have a GT240 graphics card with 1 gig of ram the GT240 is a very good card it does well with Poser pro 2010 and Vue 8.5 infinite. The GT240 is also a low power consumption card energy wise. It does not need a 6 pin molex power plug from your computer's power supply like many of the 200 and 400 series graphic cards. It is also a smaller card in size compared to some of the other cards out there which makes it great if you have a small computer case and do not have much room to work with. The GT240 is a hard working card and very dependable and right now not expensive at all.

I have seen the GT240 for sale in Australia, depending on the place selling it, for between $92-115 dollars at Mega Buy and Mwave.au.

My other PC is a quad core, 8gig Ram that used to have a GT240 but I replaced it with a GTS 450 only because I was given a great deal on it. But that GT240 took all I threw at it Poser and Vue wise.

What ever you decide on,make sure your power supply can handle it!!!

p

Quote - What ever you decide on,make sure your power supply can handle it!!!

 

 

p

Very true, you'll need a minimum of 300w for a gt240 (though it does not need a direct power supply as some do). 

John

Thank you. The power supply is a decent one: 550 watt, if I remember correctly.

So, at this point it looks like I'll be investing in Windows 7 ($118), 2 more gig of RAM (around $50) and a graphics card. I'm still on the fence with the graphics card... might end up getting that last. I could go with a less-expensive one for roughly $135 or so. This is all Aussie dollars.

Then I'll save up for that i5.

Thanks, everyone, for your input.

I looked up your motherboard and saw that the spec say it can take up to 8GB.  But they also show that it has only 2 memory slots so your going to what to buy 4GB modules.

Well, on this page it says: "The Gigabyte GA-G41MT-D3 is an entry-level, micro-ATX motherboard that uses the Intel G41 chipset and supports common 45nm Intel CPUs including Core 2, Pentium, and Celeron. As a step up from the GA-G41M-ES2L, it trades in DDR2 memory support for two dual-channel, 1066/800MHz DDR3 slots instead—though the maximum capacity is dropped from 8GB to 4GB."

But here it says: "2 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 8 GB of system memory (Note 1)" -
(Note 1) Due to Windows 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than 4 GB.

Which of these do I believe?

     I think those figures would be reconciled by considering whether the OS is 32bit or 64bit.  If you have WinXP 32bit, with 4Gb physical RAM installed, the system info will read perhaps 3.5Gb RAM  (4Gb minus the video card's half Gb onboard memory).

     If you have Win7-64bit, with 8Gb physical RAM installed, the system info will show 8Gb available;  the video card memory would not be deducted from the main RAM capacity, unless the mobo/chipset has an inherent addressable-memory limitation of 8Gb.

     Some mobos will not support a 64bit OS.

     Just my judgement, but...  budget permitting, I would not buy a 32bit machine for 3D rendering.  A 64bit machine's greater memory capacity will allow for much more complex scenes, more sophisticated materials, higher render quality settings (such as more ray trace bounces for IDL), and larger pixel dimensions.

Apparently this one will support a 64-bit OS, Seachnasaigh, and so will the CPU, a Pentium Processor E6500. And it does look like I'll eventually break down and get 2 4-gig RAM sticks. Eventually.
Doing this in stages.

NewEgg is still having its Black Friday sale for the rest of this evening, and you can get a lot of great stuff.

I just bought a combo with two MSI N450GTS Cyclone cards. These are NVidia chipsets and are fairly inexpensive. They are about $130 per card. My main computer has an NVidia GeForce 480 GTX which is nice, but I'm not using its full power at the moment.

I also have an i7-950 quad-core processor and 12 gig RAM for this computer (this is just going to be a Linux box for use with Blender and LuxRender and such) and not my Poser box.

I know that LuxRender is supposed to be going towards using graphics cards (GPUs) for increased speed and most of the other 3d packages are at least making noises that way with some progress.

It all depends on your budget. I would definately recommend a 64-bit OS (Windows 7 is working fine for me on my main machine), and at least 6 gigabytes of RAM.

Another thing to consider is portability. If you need to travel with your computer you need a small system or a laptop. And powerful laptops are expensive. I should have thought about that before ordering my system, because I could have gotten a Shuttle barebones system - their upper end now can use the more powerful i-7 processors and are very small.

Good luck!

D. Jay Newman

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

pssst the poster is in Australia. newegg won't help .....

Australia? Then there's no hope for them, is there?  :)

Sorry. I should have looked. And I don't know of the computer stores down there; given the internet, they must have something.

Jay

Everything technology is ridiculously dearer here in Oz. It's getting better than it was but it's still over-the-top. Small wonder people here shop online as much as they do: even with the inflated postage, it still works out much cheaper.

Quote - RobynsVeil, what is your budget for the graphics card? There are benefits of going 64bit even with less than 4GB physical RAM. What most people don't realize is that the 32bit/64bit difference applies to the virtual address space available to programs, not physical memory in the machine. There are 32bit server versions of Windows that can use >4GB physical RAM, while a 64bit application running on a machine with 1GB RAM can allocate 32GB of memory.

Due to sales in our Perfect Holiday thingie on here, I'm able to afford a bit more than I was able to before. My question is this: is there much point to going with a high-end card when Poser itself doesn't really take advantage of a lot of the features of, say, a Quadro card?  Or would you still get the CAD-ready workstation card, just because?

As a rule of thumb, the top model of anything (CPU, graphics card, car) is always lots of extra money for little extra value. A Quadro costs several times more than a comparable GeForce, but the difference in performance will be just a few percentage points - in my opinion, not worth the extra expense.

The best price/performance ratio is usually around the middle/upper middle, on the NVIDIA side of things I'd say that currently the GTX 460 gives you a lot for the money. 

Ah!  That is extremely useful information, Stewer! Exactly the advice I've been looking for, actually. Thank you so much for that. I'll aim for that, then... thanks so much again, and for the promptness of your response!

I agree the lower end Quadro cards really will not give you the bang for your buck that say a GTS 450 or a GTX 460 would give you.

You might want to look at the NVida 570 or such. From what I've heard they improved the GPU used in the GTX 480 and made it run both better and cooler. I would stay away from the Quadra; I looked into the performance differences when I was building my office (spare bedroom really, but I can dream) system. I was able to get a GTX 480 and have enough left over for Photoshop rather than get a Quadra.

Earlier Stewer asked about my graphics card budget. The 460 is just barely in there... still have to save $42 or so to be able to afford the MSI GTX460 1G OC DDR5 2xDualLinkDVI, which on this site http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=5 looks to be about the best card in its class for the money. The GTX 480 is beyond my budget by a fair bit.

One limitation I'm finding myself running into is power supply: I'm pretty much at the lower-end limit with my 500watt unit and don't see myself fitting another $100 - $150 into the buget for a $700watt unit.

Thanks to all for your ideas, though... they do help.

Looks nice. However, I'm not sure what a 500 watt supply will work with.

Good luck!