Ok, no problem, and thanks. The point was that it is possible to do complex Poser scenes with 32-bit Vue, but of course you have to work harder, optimize texture sizes, etc, etc. As for Vue 6 it is already so much better than Vue 5, in so many areas... I am confident that most of the Poser-related problems will be solved soon, but we must not forget that e-on also has to wait sometimes for e-frontier to correct bugs in the Poser SDK. What users see as Vue bugs are sometimes really Poser bugs...

if the sigh was related to my post, then  :

~mega-sigh~ :)

in the image I mentioned there is no compositing, and no billboards, and it was rendered on a 2 GB PC. All the figures are in the same scene and rendered in one pass, the making of PDF describes the whole thing.

A year ago or so I did this image (http://renderfred.free.fr/fei_tuvinien.html) and this was with Vue 5 Infinite, a 32-bit app which cannot address more than 2 GB. There are a lot of Poser figures in it, but 2 GB was sufficient (barely).

That being said, the 64-bit version of Vue 6 is now clearly the way to go.

btw nice pic DigReal

Ah ah good one, I meant 2005 obviously :) It feels like a long time anyway :))) In 1985 I seem to remember I was using an IBM PC AT, 6 MHz 80286 16-bit CPU, and an Atari ST with a 68000-8 MHz CPU. And one year later came the beloved Amiga... But I digress. :)

Quote - I had XP Pro 32 and 64 in dual boot before. I have XP Pro 32 on my other computer. The tech at my computer store who builds all my computers and is super knowledgeable said that the 64-bit version is still too much in its infancy and really not ready for use.

Then his knowledge does not extend into 64-bit operating systems. Or more probably he didn't want to deal with 'potential' problems that an XP64 installation could - hypothetically - create on his customer's machines (better safe than sorry :). Or he is not familiar at all with 3D rendering software, and thus does not see the need to address more than 2 GB per application.

The truth is, XP64 is not only perfectly fit to run 3D apps - and particularly Vue -  it is also lean and efficient. I use it since June 1985, in dual boot with XP32, and have done so on a dozen machines. The only problem I see with XP64 is the lack of drivers for old / exotic peripherals. As for the rest, most of the critics come from people who never tried it and repeat what they have read, or installed it without having the technical knowledge necessary to understand the implications (e.g people installing on a 2 GB system and complaining it is not faster, etc.).

As for Vista, apart from the dumbness of some functions and the DRM features, there is really one important thing that every Vue users should consider. The system itself eats several hundred megabytes of ram more than XP, so it's less memory for the apps you're running. And as a 32-bit operating system won't ever be able to allocate more than 2 GB per application, Vista 32-bit is even more restricted in this matter than XP 32-bit.

My recommendation would be : if you want to go Vista (unfortunately we will all have to go that route sooner or later, unless there is a Linux version of Vue one day), go for Vista 64-bit or wait. And if you are not afraid to try things for yourself, pick a XP64 package when you still can. Most people who did it for 3D do not regret it.

artleon, in Vue 6 an Intel Core 2 system is approximately 15% faster than an AMD X2 / Opteron system at the same GHz. 

You can see benchmarks result here : http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3344

A very good price / performance ratio is the Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4 GHz and easily overclockable), but in fact every Core 2 Duo, from E6300 (1.86 GHz) to E6700 (2.66 GHz) is a good buy. I do not recommend the X6800 as its price is too high compared to the quad-core QX6700 (which is the best performer for Vue 6 rendering right now).

Hi everyone,

there is a new revision of the document (1.02). New additions : 

• the introduction of the VueMark rendering benchmark for Vue 6 Infinite, with results for various machines (including the new Core 2 Extreme QX6700 CPU).
  - a demonstration of the minimal influence of memory bandwidth on Vue render speeds (section 3.1).

Link in the first post .

SLI is essentially a gaming technology, and you need a software profile optimized for an application to make it work really well. There are none for Poser nor Vue. Plus, in the case of many Poser figures loaded at the same time the burden is also very much on the CPU. I tested many 3D content creation apps on SLI systems, it was always extremely disappointing. 

But when you play on a high res monitor (1920 x 1200 and above) with heavy games like Oblivion or FEAR, now that's another story of course, SLI (or Crossfire) is great.

SLI would bring you exactly nothing in Poser and Vue :)

Gazukull,
On the Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2.32 GHz, with 4 threads the time was 3'53 instead of 3'56, but the time varies slightly with each run, so it is within the margin of error. 

Miss Nancy,
it depends on how much enlarged :)

Here are a few concrete benchmark figures, I created a new topic as I thought it could be of interest to some people outside this thread :

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2676460

You need a server OS to run more than 2 physical CPUs (so 4, 8 etc.). XP Pro sees  2 CPUs max, but each CPU can have many cores. So a Clovertown system (2 cpus x 4 cores) runs well on XP 64, with 8 "cpus" displayed in the task manager. XP Pro 32 bit and XP 64 have the same limitations.

As far as I know the Athlon 64 3000+ in socket 754 is a 2.0 GHz CPU, and the Athlon 64 3000 + in socket 939 is a 1.8 GHz CPU, so it seems logical that the older box compensates other deficiencies by a 10% slightly faster clock.

Personally I have never found that the hard disk speed was a bottleneck, unless of course there is not enough ram and swapping occurs, or the hard disks are incredibly slow. But on a renderfarm anything can happen :)

operaguy,

I have done some animation work with Poser 6 and Vue 6 (see the anim here http://renderfred.free.fr/animations.html, top of the page). Renderfarming in Vue with animated Poser characters is tricky, but it works.

pjz99, because 

1. you need enough ram (quantity) to run your scene without swapping. If your scene fits in ram, then adding more ram is not useful anymore (for that particular scene).

2. The ram speed has a very limited influence because of the extremely high efficiency of modern CPU caches (on chip, + L2, etc.). Real memory access does not occur often when rendering because of this. Extremely repetitive computations fitting in the caches.