Quote - Thanks for the info, InverseSpline.  My son insists that AMD processors are superior, but I remain  unconvinced. I believe I'm going to stick with Intel and get the best dual core processor I can afford.  That Quad core sounds impressive. :-)

AMD CPUs were generally faster, but the new Intel Microarchitecture has changed that. You can find more info and links to benchmarks here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2

The quad-core is planned to ship Q4 this year.

Quote - I have two machines, both running 4Gb, one intel 3GHz and one AMD64 X2 4800+. The AMD64 is running XP64 -- both running 7200 RPM SATA II disks. ... Technicaly, the single core is faster than the dual core, but I have not really seen render times faster for the single core.

I presume your 3 Ghz Intel CPU is based on the older NetBurst architecture, which should indicate that the X2 would yield better results, even though the clock frequency is lower (the AMDs are more efficient). I've not tested AMD64 and Intel (NetBurst) directly against each other in Poser, but I know that the AMD is generally faster clock for clock.

The Core 2 with Intel's new microarchitecture is, however, even more efficient than the AMDs. For example, a 1.86 Ghz Core 2 outperforms an Intel D960 3.6 Ghz (both dualcore) in 3DSMax/Cinema 4D benchmarks (the 3.6 Ghz Intel is about as fast as a 2.2 Ghz AMD X2 4200). So clock-frequency can be very misleading nowadays unless we know what chips we're talking about.

Quote - A single core 64bit system might render slower than a 32bit single core system, all else being equal.

I've performed Poser benchmarks in 64- and 32-bit Windows XP Pro (both on a FX-60 processor), and the results were roughly the same.

Quote - I'm curious. Why are you going from the AMD 64 bit to the Core 2 Intel CPU?  Is the Intel CPU much better?  I too always have other programs open when I'm rendering--usually Photoshop or some other graphics editing program, and, of course, I'm always on the internet.

I'm going over to Core 2 because it's faster (even though my liquid-cooled FX-60@3 Ghz is no slouch) and can be overclocked relatively easily. Numerous benchmarks have demonstrated that (and made a real impact on AMD owners like me...). The speed increase is not as high when running 64 bit apps, but the Core 2 still have a performance advantage in general. The prices are also very attractive, giving a superb performance/price ratio.

Later this year, Intel will also release quad-core CPUs such as  Kentsfield (I've seen benchmarks of this processor -- a so-called Intel Engineering Sample -- and the performance numbers are impressive indeed!), and I plan to upgrade to one of those when they're released.

Quote - I am completely sold on dual-core processors so much so that my next mother board build will have one. Even if poser does not use more than 2 GB of ram that fact that you can have poser rendering on one core while the other core handles the other programs running is outstanding.

It would be very exciting to see a 64-bit poser 7 program that would take advantage of dual-core, higher GB RAM machines.l

The good news is that dual-core is relatively cheap nowadays, and I personally believe that dual/multi-core will eventually replace single-core CPUs. Dual/multi-core will become standard. I also think it's nice to see that 8 GB RAM capacity is becoming more widespread on 'mainstream' motherboards. RAM prices have also fallen considerably, so it could be interesting to see how things look like in a few years. I expect to run a 64 bit OS like Vista Premium/Ultimate (which reportedly needs at least 1 GB RAM to run smoothly) and perhaps a 64 bit version of Poser that would make my workflow a bit easier in terms of memory needs.

My setup is similar to Blackhearted's: 4 GB RAM, Dualcore AMD 64 bit CPU, etc. (soon to be replaced by Core 2-based Intel CPUs).

I think he makes a good point about the fact that although dualcore won't speed things up directly in Poser, it will make your system much more responsive when you're doing other things while rendering. I often work in Photoshop while Poser renders in the background. With a single-core/single CPU the Poser rendering would slow down the system.

Like someone else has already mentioned: The 2 GB limit is actually a limit of 32 bit Windows, not Poser itself (in practice, the limit is about 1.8 GB. The theoretical limit is 4 GB, but Windows reserves the other half for itself).  There are ways to tweak the setup for Windows, so that  programs can take advantage of up to 3 GB (the /3GB switch), but it's generally not recommended and the application has to support it. Although Poser works fine under 64 bit Windows, it still (of course) won't see more than 2 GB. We'll have to wait for 64 bit Poser to take advantage of 2 GB+.

However, having over 3 GB of RAM is still useful (when you run XP with the latest SPs, Windows reports 'only' 3 GB of system RAM, even though you've got 4 GB), because if you're a multitasker and work with several programs simultaneously, each program can fit into physical RAM and things will go smoother/faster since Windows doesn't have to swap to disk that much. Although 4 GB sounds comfortable, I often find myself pushing the memory limits, so I really look forward to the day when most of my memory-hungry applications have been ported over to 64 bit.

I didn't know her either, but she definitely had artistic talent. My condolences.