I was just curious as to what kind of machines you guys use for your work. Personally I use a Powerbook G3 233.

I have a PII400 clocked at 448MHz with 384 meg ram, a 16 meg TNT and a 8 meg voodoo2, 27.4G Hard Drive

I have an AMD K6-2 500, 64 megs of RAM, which is pitiful, but I can't afford more, the built in AGP motherboard video, which I hate and which takes up 8 megs of system memory, but again, when you can't even afford food, a decent video card is out of the question. Given my choice, I'd have an ATI all in one or a voodoo 3d, with at least 16 megs of memory. A 10 gig hard drive, window 98 with everything tweaked as far as I can tweak it. oh yeah, I have an old Maatrox 3d accelerator which, as far as I canb see does nothing at all.

I'm running a PIII 500Mhz with 256Mb of RAM, a 32mb Riva TNT2 card, 2 HDD (1x13Gb and 1x17Gb), dual boot with Win98 and NT4 (soon to be upgraded to win2K), SCSI CDRW, and a 44x CDROM (Ricoh) Paul

G4/450, 256MB RAM, 20Gig Ultra-ATA HD, 10 Gig Ultra-SCSI HD, Zip100, DVD-RAM, Dual monitors (17" Sony on an ATI RAGE 128 Pro AGP, 17" Apple on an older ATI XClaim VR RAGE Pro), 3rd NTSC monitor via Firewire for DV editing, OS8.6/9.0 and Virtual PC with Win95

I use an Aptiva AMD K6 500, with 128M of Ram (8M of which goes toward Video as well), A 16M Blaster Banshee Video 3DFX Video Card, a SoundBlaster Live Gamerx sound card with Digital 4 way speaker system and Sub. 10Gig HDD and a 52X CD ROM, I have a USB HUB plugged into my system to run my periferals, 100M Zip Drive, Cable Modem, Microsoft Optical Mouse, HP CD Burner, and a 17" IBM monitor. This summer i will be upgrading the Video card to a Voodoo 3 and maybe getting two 128M RAM chips, to bring my system up to 256M of RAM

Oh yeah, I have a CDRW and a 17" KDS monitor and a Sounblaster Awe 32 soundcard I wouldn't trade for anything. I also do midi work and it's the most accurate card going

I have a p3 500 w/ 128 megs of ram, 11 gig hd, viper v550 3d card, a very old CDR, a 48x CD rom, a 6x DVD rom.. running win98, soon to be dual-booting to win2k. I'm working on a few upgrades right now, but I'm looking for a good price... what the hell happened with ram prices? I got my 128 megs for $88, now the same thing costs something like $200 or so..

P-II 400 , 256mbram , TNT2 Ultra770 , 2x17gig hd , Memorex 8x burner , 17" Sony , Win98/NT

P3 500 running at 525, 256 Mb RAM, 32 Mb Matrox G-400, 10 & 14 GB drives, IDE Zip and 2 x 2 x 32 CDRW drive, 19 " Mag monitor, triple boot - Win 98, 95 and Win 3.11 (still works!). Also a old Wacom 6 x 9 tablet, antique SCSI scanner, antique Targa Bravado Video card and a "megapixel" Ricoh digital camera.

Power Mac 7300/180 with 171 Ram, 2 two meg harddrives and a 4 meg ...17 monitor, zip drive and some other junk

Roshigoth ,evidently there was an earthquake ( I forget where) that destroyed a memory manufacturer( well that's what The people at Computech tell me) Hawkfyr's system, Just upgrqaded to an Acorp-5ALI61 Motherboard AMD K2 450 processor 128 SDRAM (soon to add another one)Dimms Old PCI STD Nitro 3D graphics card(buying a new agp card this weekend,any suggestions?) 13.6 gig western digital Master drive 8.4 gig western digital Slave drive. Acer 50X Max Cd-ROM Crappy Modem ESS audio drive sound card Altech Lansing Speaker system with sub woofer(sounds really nice). 19 inch KDS Visual Sensations Monitor Microsoft Internet keyboard Logitech marble track ball( I'll never go back to a conventional mouse again, especially for working with long drags in Graphics Apps) Cannon BJC 5000 color printer (very VERY unhappy with it)Umax ASTRA 300P Scanner (crappy too) Thanks Hawkfyr

PII-450, 128meg, Maxtor 40 gig HD, 8 meg Diamond Fire GL Pro graphics card, Win98 r.2, 40x CD and Memorex 2-2-16 Burner, Umax FB 2100 USB Scanner, Compaq monitor, Wacom 4x5 tablet USB(love it), Kodak DC210 Plus megapixel digital camera, HP 870 Cse Pro printer(hate it), Linksys USB network adapter, Encore 4-port USB hub and a PCX 1000 cable modem USB (rocks!)

Damn Art That system Rocks. Hawkfyr

Gad I'm so jealous. I have the computer and the processor, but I have half the memory I need or less, no video card, I do have a nikki equalizer and pioneer home speakers on my system, my back up drive is only 850 megs, I have no printer, no scanner, a crappy modem and a connection that rarely gets above 26400. Damn I need more memory. And I'd love a wacom tablet just for art.

lol- well i certainly have an inferiority complex now... let's see.... a -166Mhz 604e processer (aka POS) -160MB ram (acceptable) -graphics card? what graphics card? -umm.... a disk drive? does that count? -oh yah- two external HDs... total of about 12 gig -umm.... did i already say a disk drive?? so, if anyone wants to buy me a G4... ;)

G3/350 Blue&White, 288meg ram, ATI Rage Pro, 12 gig HD, ZIP100, JAZ 2gig, QPS 8xCDRW, Hell scanner, 19" Mitsubishi monitor, OS 8.6.

Buy.com had the Wacom 4X5 tablet for $70.00 US. Check out Pricewatch.com for computer memory and other related computer products! If you live farther than 2 to 2 miles from your local Phone Co. branch office, the best connection speed is about 26400. I put up with that for years! The same is pretty much true with DSL (2 mile limit), but the local cable co. made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I can typically D/L an 11 meg file in less than 2 minutes (your actual mileage may vary). There is no (perhaps minimal) bottlenecking since they use fiber optics. External USB modem, cable TV line plugs right into it. Runs about $49 / month. Not bad considering they are now my ISP and I can lose my dedicated phone line. Total cost was only about $5.00 more / month. DOH! Definitely worth it! The 40 gig Maxtor was a deal from Best Buy - $279 with a $30 rebate! Regards, - Art -

Hawkfyr, I've done some looking into the Video Card market, Maximum PC had a great article and did a comparison of several cards, the one that stood out for me was the VooDoo3, it was compatable with all of the games out there, and had a faster rendering rate then the others.

oh and Roshigoth, there was a little thing about an earthquake in Taiwan and something else about the asian economy going into the toilet, thats why RAM is so much more now

Thanks, I heard that I should get one that has a GeForce II chipset. Do you by chance know if The voodoo3(which is one that I'm considering) has a GeForce II chipset? Thanks again for the reply. Hawkfyr

Stupid earthquakes! Thanks for the info. I'd also like to know about the GeForce chips.. I'd love to get a cable modem, but, as I'm living in a dorm, it's not quite possible. My rate's funny.. until 6, I can't connect faster than 24000, but after six, I get my normal 52000... Oh well, I've gotten used to it. =) Rosh

The Voodoo3 uses the new S3 chips , Nvidia uses the GeForce chipset. In fact if you're gonna go with a Voodoo wait till the end of summer when the Voodoo5 is released , 128megs of ram on board and it uses it own power supply. Man'o'man has technology changed!

128 megs of ram and it's own power source. Jeezus. On a video card? I'be a happy man just to have a voodoo 3D with 32 megs of ram. even 16. I'm not that much of a gamer. Just want fast 2D and accurate 3D

A friend recent bought the Creative Labs Annihilator graphics card that uses the GEForce chipset and has 32 megs of ram. It absolutely blows the doors off the present Voodoo cards. His 3D 1st person shooters now show detail that he never knew existed and it Rocks!! Pretty impressive for 3D applications as well. How the new Voodoo will stack up remains to be seen. Regards, - Art -

Okay, here's a question. How much effect does the video card really have on 3D rendering in programs like Bryce or Poser or Vue?

From what I undestand, The graphics card, and memory will mainly increase redraw time,and work in shaded modes faster (open gl,Sree3d,direct 3d,etc.) Rendering is handled through the processor. Did I get that right? Hawkfyr

Bonestructure- From what I understand, the video card has minimal/nil effect in Bryce and Poser, don't know about Vue, but a good OpenGL card (which I don't have) will help out 3D Studio Max. However, the better cards are great for 3D games- I don't have seem to have any time to play games these days, but I used to!

I have three demo games on my system, quake 2, space bunnies must die and star trek evil something or other. Even though I'm unable to work and have to be at home, I haven't had much time to play lately either, but the built in AGP video in my system handles game graphics to my (low) expectations. I'd just like to have a video card in order to free up the 8 megs of memory the onboard uses. I refuse to let myself languis at home just because I'm sick and desperate. I try to do as much productive work on the computer as I can. Given the money, my choice would be an all-in-one ATI Rage Pro. But at this point I'd take any decent card with more than 8 megs of memory, as it's become clear that 64 megs of memory in my system, while all I can afford, just isn't enough for what I want to do.

Hawkfyr, no you'd be wrong, Maximum PC Ran a comparison of video cards, the did the comparison with Bryce, Corel Draw, Photoshop, Extreme 3D 2 and Premiere. Rendering is handeled by the video card if u have one, if not u rely on your processor, and that just chugs a system. Art, I would bet u have not compared a voodoo card on the same system as your friends Annihilator is on, because any 3D card will make games look better, thats normal. Fact of the matter is that Creative Labs puts out a good product, I own a Creative Blaster Banshee video card, and it works great, but Voodoo has become the one that everyone compares to for a reason, it kicks ass and is a proven product. Look on any game box, they don't list a Creative labs video card, they list things like Voodoo.

Agamemnon.. the GeForce chip is supposed to be the best out there right now. As for how it will compare to the new voodoo is yet to be seen, but at the moment it's top of the line... Then my friend also listed some other chip that promises to blow everything away when it's released.. can't remember what it was though.. oh well. Rosh

Okay, I delved into the mysterious bowels of my comp info sources. It seems that the major difference between the gefoce chipset and the voodoo chipset is the geforce is optimized for direct X and voodoo is optimized for opengl. So I guess the video card you decide to use would depend on what most of your programs use. Personally, I'd go with voodoo every time. But that's just my personal preference. Since microsoft is only grudgingly using minimal open gl support in win 2000, the geforce may be the way to go. But frankly, once a video card gets abouve 32 megs of memory, unless you're a hard core gamer, I can't see that it makes a hell of a lot of difference

thanks for the research boney. i'll prolly go with the voodoo. Hawkfyr

Bah late posting my spec's but oh well :P PII 300mhz, 164 (I think) SDRAM, ATI RAGE Pro card, Microsoft Explorer mouse (I hate trackballs and this laser is cool :P) which i stole from my father cause he didn't like it. DrawingSlateII Tablet which sorta floats between me and my father, Cable Modem, and thats about it. I love the ATI card, Voodoo let one of my friends down in a big way and I won't go near them now :P F3nix Oh and the reason everyone compairs things to Voodoo is cause at one point they where the best, they have lots of rivals now but they where once hands down best and will be used as examples until some other company does something mindblowing.

I've got a PII350 with 256 MB of ram, mattrox millenium g200 agp video card, hp cdr drive and 20 GB of hd space. Really wish I had something a bit faster in processor speed, but cash is limited. I almost forgot...got a crappy drawing pad (a cross one)...never use the darn thing too much...the pen portion of it doesn't feel right and it's too big for the small surface area of the "pad" itself (hard to get fine details with it), but it was cheap and will do in a pinch.