Did anyone tried redering with any geforce3 based video card like the Geforce3 ti500 PURE cause Im planning on buying it and I wonder if could help me rendering faster on Bryce 5.

video cards have no bearing on rendering. Rendering uses CPU and RAM.

So Im better off buying another PC or mac and render in network ?So what about network rendering?Is it the solution for faster rendering including CPU and Ram?Can I collaborate with someone or a bryce network somewhere?

I dont know about network rendering... I only have one computer so I've never tried it...

Using network rendering speed the render since you have the compute power of other cpu's. I can use 2 computers at home (one can be used has 2, it's a dual processor Pentium), so i have like 3 cpu's with network rendering and it goes fast, depending on the render settings of course. But when i want to see a image on the screen with better result than the preview, i use the network rendering with good quality render and let it go. If you any info, tell us Pleiades

The 2nd pc alone would make you happier too, you can let it render for days while you work, reboot, even reformat your first one. A ups would be a good ideal too, a weeks rendering is only the first power bump away from disaster.

Raw CPU speed is all that matters with Bryce. If you are using Bryce5 you can install Bryce Lighting for network rendering. A G4 866mhz would be a screaming fast addition, hell even one of the new G4 iMacs would be faster than a PC and they are very inexpensive right now.

Thanks guys I think I`ll be going with a new g4 Imac but I have still one question! Networking with my actual pc and a new mac will be possible?

That might be possible using OSX, but I'm not sure. You might find that with the G4 you don't need to network render and you can use your old PC for surfing the web. ;-)

LOL very funny -BTW I have an AMD Athlon overclocked to 1.1 ghz CPU which is not too bad...well if you were a seller Id buy you one Imac NOW you seem so convinced about its archetecture ;-)

Okay, I confess I own a few shares of Apple stock. ;-) Sounds like you have a pretty peppy PC there. I'm used to hearing Pentium4 users bragging about how fast they are when don't even come close to G4 speeds. I'm sure the one you have cost a lot more than a Gateway or Dell special though. By comparison, the G4 iMac BOTTOM of the line model is 700mhz G4 with 384MB RAM, 40Gig HD, flatscreen, free printer CD-RW drive with 5 USB and 2 Firewire ports is selling for...are you sitting down? $1,294 from MacMall. That's hard to beat in any man's army. DUDE, Yer gettin a MAC! hehe. ;-)

Your right all the line.I made research about apples computers.I was suprised to see the new Imacs design wich is almost out of this world!!!Since the archetecure is diferent to PCs they cannot be compared well...Hun Hum- the speed is supossed to be 2 or 3 time faster on certain apps, Bryce included.Being a new addict to bryce my choice wont be too long to take.Ill buy the newest Gen of Imac.I think this post was a complete success THANKS Alleycat169

Praise Glory! Another convert! hehe. Another soul saved from the Dark Lord Bill Gates. (kidding) Glad I could be of help to you. The speed enhancements for certain apps includes ALL Adobe products. The "Altivec" chip on the backside cache of the G4 processor is specifically designed for this purpose. Even on my 450mhz G4 Photoshop and After Effects scream along in real time, even with numerous filters applied. The Bryce speed enhancement come from raw number crunching CPU speed, over a billion computations per second or something like that. The backside cache again helps shorten the path that the data has to travel. I'm also pretty sure that OSX will allow you to use many of your PC apps on your Mac. I think you'll really enjoy it.

Hate to be the hardware nerd here but speed has jack crap to do with anything. It's all about floating point and process's a second. This is becoming more and more apparent as Intel keeps upping there Ghz speeds with out raising there floating point performance by much. AMD on the other hand keeps uping there floating point performance while not effecting there Ghz rating much. Thus a 2.2Ghz P4 performs roughly the same as the new AMD 1900+(1.7Ghz) proc. Floating point operations per second has a huge effect on rendering since floating point operations are the type of math used to compute all the factors in a render. And as die hard an x86 PC user as I am I can't help but look at the hard facts that the Apple/MAC processors blow PC floating point numbers away.

I agree with you Tekchip about the floating point in processor. I know that MAC processors are very good for that. But here in Canada, i was trying to save money for buy a G4 Dual Mac processor system. They sell it so high, about $5 000 buck with a monitor (flat one) that i think of buying instead 2 AMD Dual processor to do the job. Unless i look at the wrong store ??? Pleiades

No you didn't look at the wrong store. Mac's are inherently expensive. Bang for your buck is still going to be the AMD's. Be sure to check out pricewatch.com to get the lowest prices on your hardware. If I remember right anandtech.com ran a story on some low budget dual proc boards that they gave really good reviews on. If you build your machine you should be able to throw together a dual proc Athlon system for under $500(minus monitor of course).

You don't need a dual processor G4 for Bryce, in fact it's not optimized for them. You're better off getting a single processor 867Mhz G4. Right now they are $2494 with 640MB RAM, 60Gig HD, DVD-R/CD-RW drive and a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX video card from Mac Mall. The 733Mhz model is $1694 and the 17" flat screen is $994. Bottom line is you get what you pay for. Anything you "throw together yourself" is not going to come with tech support or a warranty (except for the individual parts). Apple has great financing options like Apple Loan and Apple Lease, which is great for small businesses. G4's are absolute top of the line as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't use anything else.

well we were talking Dual AMD proc. You get what you pay for is not so true in computer components especially pc parts. I'm running a 1.4Ghz Athlon with 512mb ram that I threw together for less than $250. Had I thrown together a Pentium 4 I'd be sitting at 1Ghz with Intels crap floating point causing me performance issues. On the other hand I would have spent over a grand for a similar Mac system. Shoot you can pick up a 1Ghz+ AMD system from Dell with full tech support and monitor included for less than a grand. Throw that up against a $2500 G4 and we come out about the same. Mac floating point is good but not so good to out perform a 1.2Ghz AMD on a price bases.

I have a PowerMac G4 with the Nvidia (however it's spelled) G Force card. It's a good card, but only affets screen redraws, not rendering. The G4 is an 866MHZ with 896MB of RAM so it has a lot of punch. I use OS9.2 (I'm not fond of OSX, it seems very slow in the "classic" mode, and the new interface, while it looks cool, drives me nuts, especially the popping icons in the dock! I'm sure that can be stopped somehow) I have a question about the RAM speedup though. When I first installed BRYCE 5, I didn't adjust the RAM allocation. Then I started getting some "low memory" errors (!) and figured it must be the memory allocation. So I boosted it to 255 MB (since I have the memory, may as well use it). Oddly, I did not see an increase in rendering speed, but did solve the "out of memory" error. I always thought rendering was dependent on the floating point operations (the FPU) more than anything else. Is this correct? Just curious. The new IMac is beautiful. But be careful of the screen. It's a sharp, crisp flat panel screen and lovely to play with. However, if you check with CNET (www.cnet.com), they have a good article on some of the drawbacks of flat panels vs. CRTs. One is color--flats don't have as rich color as CRTS (so the article explains) and the other is "latency", where the cursor "ghosts" on some panels because it is too slow flipping the pixels. I helped a friend set up an IMac (normally a no brainer, but we had to copy a hard drive via Ethernet, which made it more of a brainer). It was stunning and fast, but I did notice these issues with the flat panel. I wonder how long it will be before there is a PC shaped like a football? (just teasing!;>) Remember when e-machines copied the original IMac?

Well unfortunately at a certain point floating point gets pushed aside by bus speed. Bus speed is often much much much lower than your processors speed and thus floating point operation. It's tough trying to think about how a whole system works and not just focusing on one component. Sure your processor can handle pushing Xmb/sec. but if your system bus can't deliver that much then your gong to see your physical limitation. So once you've got enough processing power and enough ram then you just have to worry about getting information from ram to processor and back again. Think of your system bus like a hose running between your ram(pipes under the house) and your processor(your swimming pool your trying to fill). The bigger the hose the faster your going to fill the pool. That's a real simplistic way to think about it. And then you also have to figure it's a loop between your processor and your ram so your talking effectively half the data rate. Wonderful your system bus can transfere 4.2Gb/sec but you have half of that heading towards your processor and half heading away. Your bus speed is then 2.1Gb/sec. Thus a pentium4 with the new 4x ddr is out performing athlons in 2x and 3x ddrs in rendering benchmarks. Not so much that the new p4's are better they simply have more bus bandwidth. And with the mhz speeds meaning less and less why do we still measure by these retarded numbers? Why don't we go by processes/sec or some other more meaningful number?