Currently I am running an old AMD 500 with 192megs of ram and will be unable to upgrade the whole system untill the middle of the year, am i correct in thinking that increasing the ram (probably to 384meg by swapping the 64 meg simm for a 256 meg one) that i will gain a substantial performance improvement? What im realy asking is will adding the additional ram make the next few months of poser / bryce more bearable while i save up the $ for a new pc LOL

Attached Link: http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/?a=demon

Yes and no. Sure you'll get an increase in performance, but it may not be at a level you can really measure in speed. More RAM is always a good idea, but if your processor is fundamentally slow, there's little you can do to speed up your system, short of replacing it with something faster. The law of diminishing returns comes into play, in that you'll have a whole lot of tinkering for very little improvement. When I upgraded my system earlier this year, I went to 1 GB of RAM from 640 MB, but the real increase in speed came from switching to an Athlon 1800+ XP from a P3, and moving from Win 98 to XP.

Kurgen, you didn't mention the OS on your 'puter. In general, an expansion of main storage is the single most effective way of pushing performance. OTOH, if you OS is Win98 (or anything less than that) no task will get more than 128MB of storage (IIRC). The only performance improvement you'll experience is less paging activity (to and from virtual storage) so your overall system performance will be better, but Poser will still have problems with larger textures and meshes. As a conclusion, upgrade to WinXP (home!) in the first place and a decently powerful system like that SamTherapy mentioned. Regarding WinXP-HOME: I've seen some complaints on the Beta-forum for Poser by users of XP-Pro, not so many by users of XP-home. BTW, I've XP-home (with 1GB RAM, 1800MHz Pentium) and even Poser 5 worked from the start with only minor glitches (one BSOD, one hangup). Since SR2 I've got no errors again. Willy(a happy camper)

One reason you might not have seen as many complaints from XP-home users is that most power users that get XP tend to get the Pro version.

Hmm I am going to say something different and ask you to check your motherboroard specs and see what its capable of handling. If say you can go up into the amd 800+ range for $59 bucks or so you could enhance the performance quite a bit. The 64 ram bothers me though and in any system i ever saw a combo of 256 and 64 it was nothing but trouble and as far as i could tell didnt help improve anything and accually slowed things down . But each system is so diiferent it would be hard to tell unless you bench marked it with it in and out.

Just to add to the already great advice... I have WinXP Home, and , unfortunately, was one of the Poser5 people that had tremendous problems...but since SR2, even the beta versions, things have been pretty decent. BUT....XP is essential, IMO, to run Poser..4 or 5...at least without a whole lot of memory allocation problems...so XP should be one of the first things on your list. If you buy an entire system, it will more than likely have XP loaded anyway, so you may opt to wait on that, save some money there. There is another thread here on buying system components and upgrading that started yesterday....read that and check out the sites....you may be surprised at how cheaply you can put together a very powerful system... For instance, I put together an AMD XP1800+ system in February....cost me $1200 with monitor and buying off the shelf stuff at a local computer store.... That same system sans monitor can be bought today for under $500...I've seen barebone systems with AMD XP2000+ for under $300. So you may have enough dollars or be able to come up with a decent system sooner than you think....it may be better to just wait instead of trying to upgrade what you currently have, as more than likely, you will need a new motherboard and ram to go with a faster processor....Most AMD XP motherboards use DDR ram....although it is possible to buy those that use simms, but they are slower for sure.... upgrading your current processor with what you have may not really be the most beneficial, financially or in performance.

Check this out, my friends... AMD XP1800+ RETAIL---fan and heatsink $79 ECS K7S5A SiS 735 SOCKET A MOTHERBOARD - RETAIL $57 this mb supports either DDR or PC100/133 Ram..so if you have PC100 or 133 ram...man you're in for $140... PC 100/1333 ram is very cheap as well..for instance Kingston valueram...256meg PC133 for $32.... So...you may be way better off just to go this kinda route...less than $200 for pretty darn fast.

Bam !! Thats what i am talking about !!! Sweet dave

You said AMD 500. Is that an Athlon 500 or a K6-500? If it's the latter, I'd say wait. A new system will want faster memory so you might end up paying for it twice in the end. Even if it's an Athlon, it probably uses 133 memory and new systems use DDR as mentioned. I'd invest in something you can use in your new machine like a bigger, faster hard drive., CD or DVD burner, etc.

Ram helps with Poser. CPU helps with Bryce. Bryce is CPU dependent and the only thing ram does for Bryce is lets you import larger models. If you're not getting error messages on import or excessive swapdrive usage in Bryce, then RAM won't help there. The faster the CPU the faster Bryce goes. I just went from a 1.4 amd chip to a 2.1 chip with no other changes (512 ddr ram). Notice it big time in Bryce as to be expected. Very little change in Poser 4/PP or P5. Also, keep your ram chips matched as best as possible. Like, er, same manufacturer and size. I learned the hard way that mixing ram sticks in win 9x kernals can be ok and fatal in the win2k kernal. And when I say the hard way, I mean it took weeks of fdisking and reloading, etc before I figured out Win2k is not very gentle when it comes to mismatched ram. (That said, I'm a solid Win2k sp3 user. Best OS that $bill ever made.)

You might notice an improvement with the added memory, fairly cheap to do these days with the older boards. And since you are essentially going to double the amount of RAM you have, you'll prolly notice a difference in Poser. The only problem is, that if you are going to buy a new PC with a motherboard that is P4 or AMD XP/MP compliant, the memory will be different than what is currently on your old PC. So, you won't be able to use the memory you just bought for your old system, on your new one. But, since its so cheap right now, I say "why not, go for it". Evo