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Yes, thanks for making us Jelous! :-) Hope you enjoying your vacation.

Very Nice!!! Thanks Forester!

That's the way to go; generic computers run well and last longer then store PCs. And Intel gives the best warrenty on their processors and motherboards, so by the time the warrenty expired you'll be tired of that computer. :-) Even though Mac is much stable and a bit faster then Windows, like 'timoteo1' I also think G5 would be a bad choice. Cuz the price is way to high then P4 and you will need a whole new line of softwares.

Shoop is the name of "rds" who gave us his hardware info and and his opinion based on personal experience. He post the msg while I was writting, so I missed it. That's why I thanked him for the info. Happy? :-) "You somehow think?" hm! I hope my infos help you make the right judgement. :-) You know to be honest, I have never thought of this before ... overclocking the CPU on a render box. I would suggest you go slow on this matter. As gaming softwares and 3D apps don't interact the same way. Specially Vue is a Godzilla for the CPU; and if the pollygon counts gets real high on your scene or frame it might cause serious damage on a overclocked CPU. If you do overclock the CPU, drop a msg in this msg board. I for sure would love to know how did that go. :-)

Oh good, thanks Shoop for the comparission.

I never did a rendering comaprission, so I guess someone else might be able to answer that question. 1 GB memory should be just fine for Vue. Then again I don't consider Vue to be a powerful rendering tool, so my guess would be performance wouldn't be much different in both P4 or AMD. The problem is VUE handles CPU cycles very poorly. As I'm not an expert, my knowledge in SSE2 is very limited. As far as I know, the settings and parameters are much higher in P4, but it is still a bit sluggish. For instance, a simple operation on 128 bit vectors take at least two cycles and achieve a throughput of one operation per two cycles at best. On the other hand AMD has tripple pipe line, while P4 has only 2. Contrary P4 gives you better clock speed and durability. So, I would say Intel is still a step ahead of AMD. And with their HT technology I think they might went over two steps; but it's still up for observation.

For Vue, the punch line is, "The more is better." Vue is very sloppy when it comes to sharing CPU cycles and memories. So, the "best" would be the fastest CPU on the market and the max memory it can take. (Since you asked for "BEST".) Video card I suggest one of the top of the line ATI products, just make sure it is capable of Open GL. NVIDIA vedio cards seems like doesn't work well with Vue. I personaly like Intel and their products. And of course first and formost thing is how much you want to spend and what can be found on that price range! Hope it helps.

Looks like I have go for 7/11 just for subscribing this magazine. ...lol Thanks for the advice. Best regards.

LOL...7/11 sounds like a plan! I'm sure they are boxed, cuz these softwares are so big that it can't be set for download. And that will kill the website's bandwidth. Unless you are an architect major or animation major in school, I would suggest you keep maya off the picture for now. Well of course you don't have to if 7/11 goes very well. :-) C4D is a also a great modelling software. On the other hand for modelling you can actually check out Wings3D. A good modelling soft & free download!

Yeah, you said it, go Student Discount! :-) So, you are going for 3DS Max. I'm still struggling to figure out which one it would be. As I hard so many good thing about Cinema 4D and price comparision is striking!

LOL ... consider it's done, I'll send you the games. But you have to wait till next yr. :-) I'll make a new box next yr. I'm waiting to see how does Intel's HT technology turns out. The games are yours, if you can wait that long & don't get them before I do. :-) Mokba, did you consider checking your O/S setting and situations? Reading your post seems like you have done every possible and impossible things for Hardware & Vue settings. Why not check the O/S? Well, if you haven't done that already...

By the way, Eric, does ATI Redon 9700 supports Open GL? I just looked into ATI's website and I didn't see anything saying it does. Just curious.

Memory eh! I'm glad that you figured out the problem. Last year, I got my memory sticks free with the perchase of P4 processor. Can't expect warrenty on free stuffs, can I? :-) Hope to see you soon in the gallery. Best Regards.

Hey Eric, Sorry to hear you having some problems. Well, it is quiet sad that Vue is such a beautiful program; yet with so many problems. It doesn't interact well with Video Cards. Even it doesn't handle the CPU cycles properly. I recently started using Poser 5, with that software I can use few other programs (IE, outlook exp, messenger, Media player), all at the same time. But, when I open Vue, I even have to go in the taskbar to make sure no program running in the backgroud. So, in your case my suggestion would be do few steps and hope for the best. :-) First make sure except Vue no other program running, foreground & background. (So that Vue get all CPU cycles and memory) Activate your firewall or at least make sure, if you are on broadband. Then make sure your Open GL is disabled. (I find Vue works faster without it.) Then on your picture, distribute your objects in diff layers (well I'm sure you do, just going through the steps anyway) and hide the layers before you open the material editor. (This is very effective when your Pollygon counts gets really high). Hope it helps. If not I hope you'll let us know. :-) Kazi aka nish