ReggieKowalski posted at 5:26AM Mon, 30 April 2018 - #4329193

As I'm new to the 3D art world, and my PC was only really bought for music and surfing, I'm kind of assuming that it's not cut out for heavy graphics manipulation.

I'm still interested to know what kind of hardware people are using though. I'm not committing to anything yet but I'd like to get a feel for whether purchasing a hefty graphics card will actually make a difference or if it's just best to experiment with Display Styles.

Experiment with both the display styles (bop back and forth among them during setup!) and tracking modes. That won't take you long to evaluate, and it's free! :D

I use obsolete used enterprise grade machines which I've bought used ("refurbished"), or bought the used parts and assembled them myself. The other three workstations (Cameron, Galadriel, and TinkerBell) each have two X5690 Xeons (H/T hex @ 3.46GHz) with 96GB RAM.

Those processors are old enough that you can't buy them new; the only source is used enterprise gear. But my 2008 model Galadriel will outrun even the most expensive new high performance core i7 gaming computer when it comes to rendering - and have more RAM capacity for big scenes to boot. You can outrun an old Xeon, but lots of luck trying to outrun two old Xeons!

You might wonder wonder if there are new dual-Xeon workstations; Yes, but... they will cost about $25,000. TinkerBell (Dell T7500, with dual X5690 Xeons, 96GB RAM, and a 12GB Titan Z GPU) cost me $1500.

Galadriel is a 2008 Alienware Aurora chassis, refitted with an E-ATX server motherboard and two used X5690 Xeon processors:

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5