pix, Except that Carrara won't use any texture memory from your card. That is strictly for the display. In a few years that might be different, the high end packages are just starting to think about using video cards to actually do the rendering. It won't be ray tracing or GI, but in many cases the scene doesn't really need that. I think ATI just announced a plugin for MAX that will use the professional level cousin to the Radeon 9700 to render scenes. More system RAM will help render times, if you don't have enough to hold the whole scene, because you won't have to hit the harddrive. If you have enough RAM for the whole scene, then that won't make a difference either. Best regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins