I'm in the market for a new computer... naturally I would like to get the highest specs possible for everything, but budget concerns mean that goal has to be relagated to my dreams  Does anyone know what computer specs affect Poser's performance the most? I'm not going to be able to get a great graphics card, because I'm looking at laptops, but I'm wondering what else will help Poser run better. Processor speed? RAM? Hard drive space? If anyone has experience running a given edition of Poser on different computers with different specs, I would love to hear from you!

Multi-Core, at least 4GB RAM, and you can never have too much HD space :o)

My short and sweet [basic] answer. If you're running Poser 8 or PP2010, then 64 bit may come into play, especially if you want more than 4 GB RAM.

Edit: Vid cards in Poser only help the Pose room, no effect on rendering, so it's not as big of a deal as the rest.

even if ya only going to 4gb, 64bit is worth it. (not worth it for under 2gb in ram but thats mainly advice for older machines)

I hate to double-post, but I just ran into another question and it's too late to edit my original post... has anyone ran into issues with Poser 7 and Windows 7 64-bit? I've heard that Poser 7 didn't play well with Vista, and I've also heard of 64-bit operating systems having widespread software-compatibility issues, but I've also been told that those issues were with the XP/Vista 64-bit systems, and Windows 7 has fixed most of the problems.

EDIT: The posts above mine weren't shown when I made my post, I'm not sure why. I'm still wondering if anyone has had any particular issues with 64-bit systems and Poser 7?

no problems with 5,6,7,Pro here on windows 7. infact I'm running things that wouldn't run on vista (any)  on 7 64bit.

No problems with windows 7 but poser definitely does not work on vista.  

Win7 x64 + Poser 6: works

Win7 x64 + Poser 7: very good

Win7 x64 + Poser (7) Pro: excellent

Win7 x64 + Poser2010: I love you, marry me and let's stay together forever or until Dec 21st, 2012

Win Vista, all versions: ((&/%%&/$$!"

Win 7 x64Ultimate (got them cheaper as four-pack)
(all were under XPx64 until Sept. last year)
Intel i7 950, MainBoards MSI X58 Pro-E
12 GB Kingston Value Ram, 1333 7-7-7-24,
Western Digital WD3000HLFS 300 GB as SysDisc,
Western Digital WD1002FAEX 1 TB or (preferred by me) WD1003FBYX 1 TB for installs/runtimes/storage/Backups
PNY Quadro FX 3800 as GraficAdaptor
(any modern card will do as well if you're only behind Poser , my renderslaves work with EVGA GeForce GTX460 FTW, no problems.)

Essential: a reliable PowerSupply, for a non-commercial machine I would recommend Chieftec BPS-750C (that's what I use in der render-slaves) which is stable and quiet.

I run three of the above installations with the GTX460, one with the FX3800 Graphicscard, 24GB Ram (and a 1200 watts PSU). No hardware-related downtime for about a year, good speed, medium expenses, mostly P2010 and C4D.

I'm running Poser Pro 2010 and Windows XP 64 on a 4 core AMD black CPU with 8 Gigs of RAM. Zero compatability issues. Zero driver issues. In fact, the only issues EVER are that I can be a dumb-*** and mess things up tinkering.

I'm running Windows 7 X64 & Poser Pro 2010 on an Intel dual core with 2Gb of Ram, Poser can get a little slow if I add too many V4s in but it works.

Since I spend a lot of time in the Pose Room, the biggest splurge on my new system was for a new graphics card: an NVidia 460-series. I was told: "better than that is overkill". So, it was the most expensive component in my new box, but I'm really glad I did, because I now have the option to export my scene and render in Octane. Also, the morph brush and multiple figures in a scene don't slow navigating and panning the camera and all that to a crawl in the Poser room, the way it did with a cheap card.

Poser pro 7 is actually much more stable and faster rendering on Windows 7 64 bit than it is on Windows XP 64 bit.  Though to gain the full render benefit you need to set the external render option in prefgerences so Poser will use firefly's 64 bit render engine.

As for specifications that are best, it all depends on which Poser version you run, and what you intend to do with it.  For basic performance and average usage, I recomend no less than a dual core (quad or hex core are ideal, especially with Poser 8 or Poser Pro 2010 - for Poser 7 or Poser Pro anything above a quad core is really wasted CPU as it can only handle up to 4 threads).  I recomend a minimum of 3gb of ram - and you will find poser starts to lag on larger scenes just in the preview as it begins paging the hard drive.  Since Poser 7 and Poser Pro 7 (I say this to distinguish between the Pro based off 7 and Pro 2010) can not take advantage of more than 3gb of ram in total, except and unless using the 64 bit firefly render, anything above 3gb is really wasted memory (though it will allow you to have numerous other applications open without seriously impacting poser - so up to 6GB to run Photoshop or After Effects in tandam).  If running Poser 8 or Pro 2010 I would strongly recomend nothing less than 6gb at a minimum.  You will want lots of large, fast hard drives for content and final artwork (2 or more terabytes in addition to system drive).

A good graphics card will allow you to avail yourself of quality and possibly real-time preview renders -  especially useful for animating.

I have run Poser 7 pro on as low as a 2.66ghz single core and you can get by with setup, but renders will take a fair amount of time, so unless you are using secondary or terciary networked computers as render nodes, this is not recomended.

Wow, thanks for the advice, everyone! It seems that just about anything I get now will give me better performance than my current computer--I'm running Poser 7 right now on a laptop with a 1.6 gigahertz processor, 2 gb RAM, and standard XP (not 64-bit). Glad to hear that there are no compatibility issues with Windows 7 64-bit... some of the bits and pieces I'd heard were beginning to worry me, because all the computers I was looking at come with Windows 7 64-bit. Thankfully it seems the issues were confined to Vista!

There have been a few reports of problems when installing Poser 7, Pro, 8, or Pro 2010 in the normal Program Directory structure with Windows 7, but if you turn off the UAC (User Account Control) and are in the administrator account or an account with Admin priviledges, you should have no problems.

I recently installed both Poser 7 Pro and Poser Pro 2010 onto a Toshiba Satellite Dual core running Windows 7 using the default settings and it has been running with no difficulties.

Quote - There have been a few reports of problems when installing Poser 7, Pro, 8, or Pro 2010 in the normal Program Directory structure with Windows 7, but if you turn off the UAC (User Account Control) and are in the administrator account or an account with Admin priviledges, you should have no problems.

I recently installed both Poser 7 Pro and Poser Pro 2010 onto a Toshiba Satellite Dual core running Windows 7 using the default settings and it has been running with no difficulties.

Interesting you should mention that. The "bright minds" at SM insist that in order for Render Queue Manager to work properly, PP2010 must be installed in the Program Files folder of Windows 7. To wit:

I apologize for the confusion. The recommended installation process is to install the Program to the Program Files and Content to Shared Folder. This is the default install settings and causes no issues on Windows 7 or Vista and will work for XP as well. If you use this installation, all content that is modified is on the Shared Folder and is not impacted by Vista's or Windows 7's Security.

Some users are wrongly informed that some content must be installed into the Main Program Folder for it to function. This has not been required of content since the release of Poser 5 which allowed for external Libraries; and, since Poser 7 (ver 7.0.4.220) the option to have no Content in the Main Program Files Folder has been available. This was developed specifically for dealing with Vista and later Windows 7 and is the recommended installation for these operating systems.

There is something corrupted with your installation. The Queue Manager should be trying to load the FFRender64 on your system if the program was installed correctly, not FFRender. I believe this is due to the program not being installed to the Program Files Folder of a 64 Bit system.

I recommend you do a Clean reinstall using the default options. You will get the option to install both the 64 Bit and 32 Bit versions. One will install to the Program Files (the 64 Bit Version) and the other will install to the Program Files (x86) <You can opt out of this install, but if you use any older Python Scripts, I recommend installling, since some will not work under 64 Bit version without updates>

Let the content install to the Shared or Public Folder. You can then add additional Libraries to the Shared Folder as you install custom content. All currently available content for Poser can be installed to the Shared Folders and linked to Library from there.

If you have any questions about this, please let me know.

John Csaky | Customer/Tech Support
Smith Micro Software, Inc.

Just FYI... of course, consider the source.*

The #1 impact on Poser performance is CPU.

I would look @ any Sandybridge (post-bug) based laptop. 

To generalize further, something i7 (gen1/2) based would be the way to go.

I would really look @ a desktop for real power however.

-G

I find keeping my drive rather empty works best, and installing poser on the c drive while have the external runtime on my seagate external hard drive, it runs blazingly fast, and does  not clutter up my main hard drive or increase it's seeking times.

 most threats are designed to target the c drive so....

if something were to happen to my pc that caused me to lose my data, and have need to format my c drive I wont lose my runtime, I can also use it on my laptop or my desktop so it is portable.