The information in that MS article is wrong.
The /3GB and /userva settings are not supported by windows XP.
Most likely XP will just ignore the switches and it won't hurt your machine. Still MS should be more careful about what they write. I've notified my contact at MS to check the article.

Anyway, that switch would not have helped. There are very very VERY few programs that support the /3GB switch. Even most server software does not support that option.
The chances of Poser supporting it are near non-existant.
(instead of going through the troubles of supporting /3GB a programmer will more likely support /AEW so that they can use 16GB of memory instead of 3GB)

So Poser is stuck with "only" 2GB for renders.
Even if you have 3GB of physical ram, Poser can only use 2GB. There is nothing you can do yourself to work around this limit. And don't expect an update from CL either, since it would require rewriting a lot of code. (And Poser6 has enough memory problems already, so it doesn't need more complexity in that area :-))

Maybe now that lots of people have AMD64 cpu's and windows X64 is finally available, CL will make a 64bit version of Poser7. That would fix this issue.

As I said, placing a swapfile on a different harddisk only helps if the program is doing a lot of work on the harddisk AND at the same time is swapping to the disk. In that case you distribute disk usage over two disks and see a performance increase. But that doesn't apply to Poser, and therefore you won't see a performance increase. BTW I would never set the min/max size the same. There is simply no logical reason to do that. By setting the min size you can indeed prevent fragmentation of your swapfile and windows doesn't spend time changing the size of the swapfile. Therefore a good minimum size is the maximum amount of virtual memory you normally use, plus a bit extra. (25% for example). There is no harm in setting a high max size. Windows will only use it when it needs more swapspace, and when it doesn't need it anymore, it releases that diskspace again. But when your max space is not large enough, your application will crash. So I don't take a risk and set a high max setting. My max setting is 3GB. (Normal application cannot use more than 3GB, so higher then that isn't needed IMHO) BTW just placing swapfiles on a seperate partition but not on a seperate disk doesn't increase speed. (Because it is still the same harddisk that had to do the work) The only thing you can accomplish that way is to prevent fragmentation of the swapfile. (But you can also do that with a good min size)

Poser doesn't make it's own swapfiles. It lets Windows take care of that. In Win9x versions that mains only one default swapfile is used. In Win2k or WinXP you can define multiple swapfiles on different partitions. So there you can play around with it. But I'm not sure if it will make much difference in Poser anyway. I don't think it uses the disk much anyway. Putting a swapfile on another disk is only usefull if besides the swapping the system is also doing a lot of other work on the disk. (Because in that case one disk will take care of the swapping, and the other takes care of the other work. That also explains why just having two partitions on 1 disk isn't usefull for this at all, since it is still the same disk that has to do all the work)

It uses the windows swapfile.

Jackson: The reason I don't have problems with P5 is because I live in Europe.......

No. You cannot allocate memory to a specific program in windows. Windows will just give any program as much memory as it asks for. (Windows will keep a decent amount of memory for filecache and to keep important DLL's and windows code in memory). When you allocate memory in Adobe it only tells Adobe how much memory to ask from Windows. (That why you can limit the amount of memory it asks for to save for other programs, or even exaggerate so that no swapping is required when it needs more) A Page fault basically means nothing more then that Poser asked for a piece of memory that wasn't stored in RAM, but that was stored on the disk in the swapfile. When you see lots of Page faults, (a page is small, so if you need a couple of MB from the swapfile you quickly have lots of page faults) it means that Windows didn't have enough memory available in RAM to supply to Poser. Of course swapping is really slow, so it should be avoided if possible. Two remedies: 1) Buy more RAM. I'd advise to run Performance monitor in the background and measure the amount of memory poser wants. That way you can see how much RAM it asked for and how much you should buy to keep it happy... 2) Try to free up memory by closing programs in the background that use lots of it. BTW those memory cleaning tools you can find on the web DO NOT help for this. (If people want to know why, I'll be happy to explain it, but I don't think that that adds anything to this thread at this moment) Setting a priority only applies to the amount of CPU time a program receives when it has to share it with other programs. It doesn't do anything to memory. By default the foreground application will get a bit higher priority in windows. (Except in server versions)

Maybe it's time for someone with a bit more experience with computers to respond ;-) The priority settings have nothing to do at all with memory. You cannot assign a program more memory in Windows. That advice is strictly for Mac users. When you start a program in windows XP it will automatically have all memory available that you have installed in your PC. (well actually 2GB, but let's not go that deep into things :-)) So you don't have to do anything about that in windows. Setting a higher priority for a program has to do with the CPU time it receives. When you run just one program it has all CPU time available to it. But when you run multiple programs the CPU time is distributed among them. (They each get a short moment to run on the CPU and then have to wait for the others) When all programs have the same priority, the CPU time will be distributed equally to them. When you select a higher priority for Poser, it will get more CPU time than the other programs. By default Windows XP will already give the foreground applications, (the one you work in at that moment) a higher priority than the background applications. So if you don't run other CPU-hungry applications in the background you won't see much difference when you select a higher priority to Poser. It's only usefull when you run something that uses lots of CPU in the background. (Like a Bryce render) and don't want Poser to be slowed down by it. Hope this helps. Marc

Never said it was an good solution when considering rendering time ;-) BTW I don't have P5 yet (Europe) but can't you just adjust the length of those stray hairs? I thought you could adjust every individual strain of hair if you wanted too? (That scissors suggestion might not have been bad... :-)

Collision detection?

Some people prefer Intel chipset motherboards over VIA or SIS chipset motherboards. In that case you have to stick to a P4 CPU, since Intel does not make chipsets for Athlon. But I see many people with P4 motherboards using a VIA or SIS chipset and those motherboards are just as good (or bad) as the Athlon motherboards. Anyway, the problems with VIA motherboards seem to be a thing of the past mainly. About the temperature. Yes the Athlons get hotter than the pentiums, but then again the Athlons are designed to be able to run at higher temperatures then the P4 too. So it doesn't matter that they get hotter. I'd mainly focus on getting a cooling fan that doesn't make too much noise.

Jaager: That's something that shouldn't be that difficult to fix, would it? But it might indeed prevent a direct conversion. Nosfiratu: What did Kupa answer?

A while back there was a thread in which performance of different computers was tested with a scene Jim Burton made. The results were that with Poser4 the AthlonXP definitely defeats the P4. That said, Poser5 might behave differently, but I don't really expect it to have special P4 optimizations. If that new render engine leans heavily on FPU (which I expect it will) then AthlonXP will probably again beat the P4. Performance also depends heavily on RAM, so don't forget to take that into consideration when comparing an Athlon and P4 system.

Thanks!

Any chance of posting a single screenshot of a piece of clothing that is not a 'circle with a hole in the center'? Please?? :-)

I did see the manual. That's where my question comes from :-) The manual suggests it should be easy, but I see no screenshots in the manual, and no screenshots anywhere else. For me the dynamic cloth and dynamic hair are the most interesting features for P5. So I'd expect CL to advertise these spectacular features a bit more. A better renderer etc is nice, but we all got by with renderers from other software packages already. It's these features which are really new.