I added three V4s in that scene, render time was 9-10 minutes, core temperatures were about 50°C (123°F) while this was rendering.

http://img203.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=26870_Render_1_122_474lo.JPG

MSI errors? You mean errors when you try to install something? That's the only MSI that comes to my mind is installer MSI files. Installer errors could mean there is problem with your windows installation. Especially if it's been long time since it was reinstalled last time (if ever). I usually reinstall my OS' at least once a year.

That temperatures don't seem too high. Mine are currently somewhat higher that that, 40 and 43°C. Those temperatures are normal for this generation of CPUs, I guess it's the same as the one in computer I'm currently on, Core 2 Duo, conroe generation, mine is E6300, originaly clocked at 1.86 GHz, mine is overclocked to 2.8 GHz.

I'm out of ideas for this problem. I just tried rendering one scene. It has fair amount of props. I used 3 lights. One infinite without shadows or AO, one infinite with ray traced shadows and one IBL light with AO. This is the result

http://img267.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=03052_Render_5_122_439lo.JPG

It took 4-5 minutes to render this.

Getting 64 bit OS will only help your poser to allocate more memory, it won't speed up your render time. I meant P8, not Poser Pro, Poser Pro is more like P7 with 64 bit support (and few other doodads). P7 and Poser Pro can break render to up to 4 pieces and then assign a piece to free core (i.e. if you have more than 4 cores, they're going to be wasted), P8 breaks it to larger number (let's say 50, just for the sake of conversation) so cores are better utilized if you have more than one.

Yes that's the thread option, it wouldn't be bad idea to know what are your idle temperatures. If cooling is failing they're also going to be above the norm. Yes, that's a good rule for threads, if you have two cores they'll be better utilized with 4 threads (I think I explained it somewhat in previous post). But that's also the problem with quad core. Max number of threads in P7 (and Poser Pro) is 4. You can't set it to 8 to better utilize them, you'll need P8 (or Poser Pro 2010 when it comes out next year) for that.

3 Lights really don't seem that much. I also mostly use 3 lights, one with ambient occlusion, one with no shadows and one with raytraced shadows. Render times vary from 10 to 20 minutes. Depends on number of chars, props and on which computer I am (I have one 2.8 and one 3.5GHz, both core 2 duo). 

Quote - Ok so still my main question - is Windows upgrade alone going to help with Poser speed at all? I know you need all the pieces but if I can only afford one I want to get what will make the most difference for me now. Or even if it would make more of a difference getting Poser 8 first (don't care about Pro I won't wait that long, plus don't even know if I need Pro)

Going for 64 bit windows is not going to increas CPU power. In some cases it even reduces it. 32 bit application handles data in 32 bit packets (called words), if application is 64 bit (and of course OS is 64 bit) that word is 64 bit's in size. In cases where that data is larger than 32 bits we get speed increase. Logically, 32 bit OS needs 2 words (2 * 32), and 64 bit can push that data in one word. But in cases where that data is smaller than 32 bits 64 bit OS will have more overhead (wasted space) and that decreases it's speed, or better said efficiency. But in either case, that increase/decrease is only few percent. Nothing to worry about in either case.

Quad core CPU would decrease render time. But it would not cut it by half. Poser render is not that efficient. P7 can divide the picture in 4 parts. Then every core gets one quarter to render. When it's finished it idles.
Btw. do you have multicore support enabled in poser? It's done under general preferences, turn separate process rendering on and move slider to max. Even if you currently have only 2 cores you can benefit from setting it to render as if you have 4 cores. If you set it to only two each core would get half the picture, if one finishes it's part it has to wait  until other one is done. If you set it to 4, picture is divided in 4 parts, as I already said. But you have "only" two cores. So the render starts on first two quarters, last two quarters wait until one core is done, when one quarter is done it goes to third quarter and so on until it's done. In the end, there's less down time.

Poser 8 improved on this, it divides picture in many parts and then renders them sequentially, like most renders do.

But before you buy anything. Have you checked CPU temperatures. Maybe overheating really is the culprit here and you just need to clean your CPU cooler or buy new one (which is much cheaper then buying windows or new CPU). How many lights you have in your scene, do they cast raytraced shadows, ambient occlusion? All this could influence your render time. And we're only guessing since we haven't seen what exactly you want to render.

3600m is based on 8800m GPU and FX5800 has the same GPU as GTX 280. They're in fact the same cards. Only difference between quadro and geforce is graphics card description in firmware so it would only take geforce or quadro drivers. Unless you nudge it a little to install quadro drivers.

I don't have cottage model, or forest ruin so I can't try it, but what are preview render setting in both cases? Cottage interior looks like it has different textures for floor and ceiling for gamer (or beter said regular) card case when compared to quadro, and wall texture is strectched across the wall, i.e. like wrong U and V scale settings in material room.

Here's my example. First is with default render preview settings, and second is with maxed settings.

Yes, shell, elevated shell if you have UAC enabled, i.e. instead of just starting command prompt, right click it and select Run as administrator.

If you want to switch to Sree3D right click your preview window and choose Sree3D. But that will only change your preview window back to software, rendering is already done in software, graphics card has no effect what so ever on it.

Another thing came to my mind. Is cooling of your system adequate? Maybe CPU fan failed, or got bogged down with dust. When you start your render it heats up, and to prevent overheating it reduces it's speed. You can use Everest program to check CPU temperatures and fan speeds, or Core Temp which is free, but only displays core temperatures, not fan speeds. I have Pentium Dual Core (basically same as Core 2 Duo, but with somewhat less cache memory and without virtualization technology) overclocked from 2.5 to 3.5GHz and my temps go up to 60°C on one core and 54°C on second core  while rendering (they don't need to have same temperatures), while idling first core is around 43°C and second is at 37°C.

Also, overheating could make applications crash, so maybe that is what's troubling you. As you said, over specific resolution makes rendering crash. Thing is, the bigger the picture, the longer it takes to render. The longer it renders, the more heat it produces. When it reaches critical temp render crashes.

On my system Vista x64 takes about 1.4GB of ram after the boot, but that's because I have 8GB. If I take 4GBs out, initial usage is 700-800MB. But that's the point, memory is there to be used, that's what it's supposed to do. It doesn't do anything good if it just sits empty. If there is need for more memory it will free what it doesn't need. XP takes much less ram after the boot, but that doesn't necessarily means it's better, it's more that it doesn't know what to do with it. XP is 9 years old, when it came out 256MB was a lot.

I switched to Vista one and a half year ago just because of poser. I was pure luck that I tried vista back then, but I noticed something interesting with it. I was rendering animation back then, quite a lot of animated scenes and I was using XP. Around that time I gathered some courage to install vista and see what the fuss was about. I finished playing with it but it was already too late so I just ran poser, loaded a scene and let it render over night, with return to XP delayed for the next day. Next morning I was surprised, it finished rendering, that same scene (content and length wise) took more time on XP. So I started few more scenes and noticed the difference. Under XP poser loaded textures and all that what it does before rendering for every frame, rendering took about a minute per frame, and all that prework took 3 minutes. Under vista first frame took the same amount of time as XP, 4 minutes all together, but every frame after that took only a minute. Texture loading and prework just blinked, and it immediately started to render. I guess that's just because of the way vista uses memory in comparison to XP. XP was made for different amount of RAM in mind, it loads what it needs, do with it what was asked for, flushes it and waits for new task. Now memory is relatively cheap, amount that was norm for XP is kinda ridiculous now, so why not change that philosphy and keep stuff in RAM untill that space is needed for something else, it's also way faster than 9 years ago so flushing it just before it's needed is fast enough.

As for Red ants™, I guess that's normal for IDL at the moment. Some models increase render time exponentially when IDL is used. I toyed with two scenes, both had one character and both were interior scenes. One had all doodads that interior scene should have, chairs, table, and 2-3 more props. Other was more simple (free supermarket model I got from somewhere), and most objects in the scene were just cubes, and variations on that theme. First scene took about 10 hours to render, second one took 15 minutes, same lights were used in both. After that I gave up on IDL. I could have deleted everything from first scene and then slowly add stuff to see which prop caused all these trouble but I didn't had the patience to do it.

P.S.

Ressourceovervågning is Resource Monitor on english Windows. :)

What other applications do you have running? Like antivirus applications, firewalls, antispyware applications that some people may use? Maybe it doesn't really have anything with poser. You checked that CPU is running at full sometimes, but is it occupied with poser or something else? You can check this at process tab, find poser.exe there and look at CPU part when poser is rendering.

I also have 8800GTS, two computers, one has first revision with 320MB ram, second one has newer revision with 512MB and both work fine. No crashes. Graphics card could cause crash only in preview if OpenGL is enabled. As MikeJ said, it doesn't do anything when poser is rendering, and if that rep suggested that rendering problems are graphics card's fault he should either change the job, or read something about the product he's advising on. Hmm, maybe it was actually the janitor, Scrubs janitor comes to mind :P. Or if you want to be sure try switching it to sree3d before you start render.

You can just set P7 to use P6 runtime folder as external runtime. I did so with PPro and P7.

Thank you for your suggestions, I was looking for something like that supermarket. I think that one will be fine after some new textures and some props so it wouldn't seem so empty.

Hmm, wow, I never expected so many replies :).

TrekkieGrrrl, thank you for that hint. That freezer will surely come in handy :).

ockham, thanks for gas station models, I found some but they weren't free and they were for lightwave, for some reason that second model with pumps and canopy hidden reminds of some small restaurant or coffe shop. Not to be discarded anyway :).

Thanks for the lucky dragon site Banpei and markschum, that store model could be what I was looking for, I'll give it a go and see what can be done with it. That's a nice site, there are few of nice models there, restaurant, bank...

@Nance

I googled a little for Ken Sisemore, and found him on rosity and his email, sadly I doubt it'll work has ChemicalStudios.com as domain. But I think that Lucky Dragon's store model will be good enough with some new textures.

I'm all out on ideas. If it works in 32bit XP it should work in 64bit, dual boot or not. Also, generic drivers should work unless hercules implemented something special that prevents windows from using generic (ones from ralink site) drivers. Hercules drivers are from 2007., so I doubt that they'd include Vista64 drivers and not XP64. Nowadays most hardware has same drivers for XP and Vista, graphics card and motherboard drivers are one of exceptions. I.e. drivers are the same as in file sense, but "they know" what part to use when installed on XP, and what on Vista (same was for 32bit, only one set of 32bit files inside).

Last thing I can think is to try with these drivers, I hope it's OK to post rapidshare link

rapidshare.com/files/144144476/RT2500V3.0.4.0_WinXPx64.zip

These are the drivers I used with XP64 year or so ago, they are older, but my card worked with these. These are pure drivers, no control panel or anything, just drivers, zip is around 120 kb in size. You need to install them manually. Right click on wifi card in Device Manager, Update driver option and then browse to folder where you unpacked it manually. If windows say they can't find compatible drivers for your hardware then hercules must have implemented something that prevents windows to use the card with generic drivers.
Funny thing is, I found on more than one place that it says card supports XP64 bit, like here www.touslesdrivers.com/index.php, and drivers on that page are the same as the ones from hercules site (HWGPCI-54-V3.1.exe).

I found it on hercules site, DL-ed it and looked what's inside, 64bit drivers are inside. Are you sure your card is working properly? I had similar experience when card had some kind of conflict (in my case it was SkyStar2 card). None of the drivers worked, it was in device manager, but wouldn't take any drivers. I plugged it in another PCI slot and suddenly everything worked fine.

For manual install go to device manager, find your card (probably something named network adapter), right click it and select install drivers or update drivers, it depends if some drivers were insalled or not. I noticed you're from France, so you'll have to figure out what these are called on french windows. Next you should tell windows that you want to find the drivers manually, and browse to folder where they are. If you didn't change anything during installation they should be in your "Program Files (x86)" folder (again, translate to your windows version) then RALINKRT6x Wireless LAN CardDriver.

I just downloaded them and hercules' drivers, they all seem the same, except hercules has older version. And I see that there are x64 files in hercules version. Have you tried with them?

ftp.hercules.com/wifi/drivers/HWGPCI-54/HWGPCI-54-V3.1.exe