The specs in the first post were way out of date, the second setup you listed vince3 looked better.

A good hardware site I'd recommend is http://www.anandtech.com/

A number of their performance reviews include benchmarks for 3D Rendering Applications (no Poser of course, but at least will give an idea on rendering).

An example from a recent CPU review: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3012&p=7

For purchasing components, check out http://www.newegg.com/ as you shop around. Great prices and selection and they have user reviews, quite a few for the more popular components.

No soldering required to assemble your own machine, but you need to make sure you get all the right components for the right slots. :) The quality of instructions that come with motherboards and other components vary considerably, it's a good idea to look for some guides on the web on how to assemble a PC. I think for a first timer installing the RAM (installing RAM requires more force than you might expect), and the CPU are the most nerve wracking, I still get a little nervous when installing the CPU/heatsink/fan and I've assembled my last four PCs myself!

As to ATI vs NVidia, I have heard anecdotal reports that currently ATI's OpenGL support is better than NVidia, which would be a reversal from a couple years ago. Try checking out specific reviews for cards from both manufacturers you are considering and see if you can find any specifics on OpenGL performance.

Operaguy,

     As to the Seperate Process Renderer, it isn't quite ready for prime time.

Moderate High Quality Render
Render time = 842.21 seconds. 2 Cores/2 Threads
Render time = 919.93 seconds. Seperate Process Render 2/2

Not only did it take longer, but there was noticable color banding in the background of the image that was not there when rendered at the same settings rendering directly in Poser. Also, it still ties up Poser while using the seperate process render, so there is no advantage there. Seems like a feature they didn't really finish development on and just stuck it in there. I'm guessing we'll see an improved version or offshoot in Poser 8?

svdl,

     For me, the second core gave a speed boost of ~85% over a single core with high render settings. That's why I'm very curious for your tests when you have time. First, to see how the Intel scales 1 core vs. 2 and of course then to see how it scales 2 cores vs. 4. :)

     4 cores have other benefits beyond raw rendering time, I'm not at all trying to discount quad core as an option (I'm looking into it for my next upgrade personally). It will just be very helpful for all of us looking at quad core systems to see some actual numbers.

     I think the pivot point between cost/benefit of buying two dual core systems vs. a quad core system isn't necassarily settled, plus a quad core system get's bonus points for being more managable from a practical use standpoint for many people.

Operaguy,

     Here is a quick run of the simple render numbers run as you requested, after an initial "foundation" render to load things into memory. (The dialogs still show textures being loaded and shadowmaps rendered on subsequent runs, but it is faster than the initial run, so maybe the second time is quicker because these things are now in ram rather than being loaded from the HD?)

Simple Low Quality Render (buffered)
Render time = 123.58 seconds. 1 Core/1 Thread
Render time = 125.03 seconds. 1 Core/2 Threads
Render time = 79.23 seconds. 2 Cores/2 Threads
Render time = 86.87 seconds. 2 Cores/4 Threads

Notice that the render times went up in this case if the number of threads was set higher than the number of cores. Even though there was a slight benefit in the high render quality test in the previous thread from going to 4 threads, it may be a hit or miss thing depending on how the workload is split based on the composition of the scene. I'll try to test that out further later tonight. (Previous informal tests had led me to chose 2 cores/ 2 threads for my renders).

Operaguy,

     Thank you very, very much for the script! :)

Here are some numbers I pulled from my AMD 64 4400+ X2 Dual Core Processor:

Simple Low Quality Render
Render time = 151.07 seconds. 1 Core/2 Threads
Render time = 104.29 seconds. 2 Cores/2 Threads

Moderate High Quality Render
Render time = 1546.12 seconds. 1 Core/2 Threads
Render time = 842.21 seconds. 2 Cores/2 Threads
Render time = 789.52 seconds. 2 Cores/4 Threads*

You'll notice that the benefits of the additional core are much greater the more complex or higher quality the render. This is because the pre-render portion of the process (loading textures and meshes, calculating shadow maps, etc...) only uses a single core. Once that is out of the way and the actual render starts, you get full advantage of the cores/threads.

The way Poser Firefly utilizes additional cores is very efficient, but the boost as a percent will vary from image to image. With two cores, one core renders the top half of the image and one core renders the bottom half. If there is more computationally intensive content in one half vs. the other (human characters have more to render in the top half and raytracing transmapped hair seems to be a big resource hog), one core can finish before the other, which leaves that core idle for the rest of the render.

With 4 threads, it splits the image into quarters.

If anyone is going to test this out on their system, make sure to quit Poser after each render and restart the application. Poser will reuse some pre-render information from the same session, to make sure that doesn't skew the results you need to quit and restart poser. :)

*note the third line of test two is only two cores, but with 4 threads. The added performance was likely due to the way the scene was quartered up between the threads. Even though two threads finished before the other two, both cores were active for the entire render.

Still hoping for some quick benchmarks comparing 1,2 and 4 cores. No need for a custome script, just a scene that takes a few minutes to render and a watch or timer. :)

Ok, to the heat issues and the importance of cleaning the dust from inside your PC:

It's been too long since I cleaned mine last, picked up some canned air today and went to to town. PC off, of course, also was careful, as suggested, to prevent any fans being sprayed from rotating with my finger or a pen (rotating the fan with no current coming to it can produce a current back into the system).

I wish I had tested the temp right after the dusting and before touching anything else, so I could have seen just the difference from dusting. However, I did also adjust my fan speeds on the case, increasing the speed on the fan that pulls air out of the case directly behind the heat sink and slightly lowering the fan that exhausts out the top blow hole. I also suspected that over time the thermal compound between the Heatsink and the CPU may have developed air pockets, so I gently pressed down on the heatsink and wiggled it a tad. (I probably should have removed it completely, cleaned off the old compound, applied some new and re-installed the heatsink, but it seems to be working great now so I'll watch my temps for any increases in the coming days/weeks).

Rendered the same scene at high render settings on both cores, ambient temp in the room is about the same.

CPU temp went from 59C (under full load) before cleaning and adjusting to 44C under full load after!

The change was so significant I'm sure it has to have been from more than just removing the dust, but it definitely illustrates the value of cleaning the inside of the case on a regular basis. Temp at idle decreased a lot as well, from 41C to 31C.

Quote - Significantly faster. I've got a Q6600 myself, with 8 GB of RAM running XP 64 bit. Not only is the rendering fast, it can also render scenes of much higher complexity. 10 Millenium 3 figures, all with different hires textures, hair, clothes, environment - it eats 2.5 Gb, but it renders! Default render settings, default lighting - a couple of minutes and it's finished.

That Radeon might be a problem. The older Radeon cards have lousy OpenGL support, and XP 64 bit isn't supported at all.

Extra cores tend to add diminishing returns in most apps, but the way the Firefly renderer breaks up the rendering process between cores, it might be a better gain than for other applications.

Would you mind timing the renders using 1 core, 2 core and 4 core? It would be helpful for a lot of people trying to decide if 4 cores is the way to go at this point in time. (You can select Poser.exe in the Windows Task Manager Processes tab, right click it and under "set affinity" turn off cores for that process. Make sure you aren't rendering with the "seperate process" option in Poser and time the renders).

It would really be appreciated by myself and I'm sure a lot of other people as well. :)

Quote - It's a new Radeon card - the Cross fire.

512 Radeon Crossfire isn't a model name. Madel numbers for processors and everything else seems to be more confusing than ever before, so don't worry about making the mistake, but if you can find out the actual model number we can help you evaluate it. :)

I've actually heard people say that the new Radeons have better OpenGL than NVidia, which is a turn around from a couple years ago.

Quote - I am a fanatic about keeping the inside of my machine clean. Once a month it is taken down and cleaned. I have not had an overheating issue yet and I run a dual core box WITH a stock cooler. I have mixed feelings about going out and paying an arm a leg for a turboprop for you box. I guess it depends in your set up and what you're using it for. All my machines have used stock coolers and I have never has an issue. Keeping your box clean, dust free and not packing it to the hilt with junk is a plus.

People don't realize just how important it is to keep their machines clean. I do some computer repair on the side from my home and you should see some of the machines I get that have never been cleaned since the were purchased. Dust is the enemy!

Definitely good advice. :)

As far as a "turboprop for your box", (hehe) this is the cooler I'm using, which is why I figured if I was having heat issues with Poser 7 on a hot day, some people with stock coolers may have problems even if their ambient temps aren't too high:

http://www.pureoverclock.com/article26-2.html

About $25 to $30. It can be a little scary to install one of these things though, I think that is a bigger factor for a lot of people than the cost. :)

There are definitely some application crashes that are not heat related, everytime I change render settings or hit the render button, I have my fingers crossed. :)

It's not a constant thing, but often enough that I'm back in the habit of saving before renders or after I've made changes to a scene.

Definitely not as stable as I would have hoped from an SR2. :(

When I had problems with P7 on release, I put it aside and used P6, waiting for them to get a couple service releases in place. SR2 is what brought me into P7 a lot more fully. I mention this because I'm not sure that this is a P7 issue or an SR2 specific issue, Firefly Renders at high settings seems to be heating my CPU more than any other application (or game) I've used. Of course, having a dual core CPU, it's worse with 2 cores rendering than just one, but it's really amazing the heat load it can produce.

For me, the warm days were the tipping point, but I can easily imagine that some people using the stock coolers for their CPUs may be experiencing heating problems even in normal temps. and even if overheating has not been an issue for them in the past.

Cleaning out dust in the case is definitely a good thing to do routinely, it insulates heat a lot more than people realize. Thanks for mentioning it, because I haven't done mine recently. Time to buy some canned air :)

Had a "poof" Poser crash today that was repeatable. The Olympus Mons set from Daz would poof Poser if Smoothing was on in the render settings. It would go through the initial render set up, but as soon as it got to the piont where it should start the actual render, poof!

This instance was not overheating, so even though I found many cases where heat was the cause, there are still some bugs that will cause the app to crash with out a peep. Hard to supbit debugging info in a bug report if there is no error message.

It was that set in particular, I'll be looking out for other similar crashes.

Looks great. :)

Looking forward to more renders. I'm sure people will soon start begging for AMUCFSV4. :)

Quote - Since I installed the latest update for Poser 7, half way through a render my computer switches off. Has anyone else experienced this problem and/or know how to fix it?

Before the update, my Poser 7 seemed very stable. Is it possible to go back to an earlier update or does it mean I have to reinstall Poser to get rid of the last update?

If your computer is actually turning off (it happened to me earlier this week) it's an overheating issue, almost certainly. Hot summer days, plus a heck of a load put on the CPU during rendering and your CPU temps may be triggering an automatic power down (which most motherboards do as a safety to prevent your CPU from being fried).

These threads are discussing the same/similar issues:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2702905
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2702153

:)