Hi all, I was wondering, would it be better if I added more memory to my machine or upgrade the processor? Right now I am running on a 750Mhz Athlon processor and 384 megs of ram. I can go to a upgrade cpu of 1Ghz and max out my ram at 768. To go any higher on my CPU would mean a new motherboard. What do you folks think? Mike

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I'm afraid you'll not like my kind of answer since I'd like to know the same thing... All I can say is that a P4 1Ghz with 256 RAM (my PC) is clearly not enough!!! I suppose that a lot more RAM would be good, but it seems like no one out there would answer clearly the question (I tried Curious Labs - at least humourous the reccomended system requirements for Poser5...I'd like to see what they render with that - and many themed forums). I don't know what kind of OS you run, but "someone" say that Win98 isn't able to manage more than 128 Megs of RAM per program, so in that case would be the case to upgrade to Win2000 or XP... but I can't say it's an unanimous opinion. Imagine that doesn't help too much, sorry... I can only hope someone else will clearly answer the question, so we'll know what to do... Alberto

Thanks Alberto! If I learn more I'll let you know. I am working on just scraping the motherboard in my system now and just get a new motherboard and processor. I was reading on Daz site that Win 98 can't seem to recognize the amount of memory for poser. It didn't matter if you had 126megs or 600 megs no more memory could be allocated for Poser running on Win98. That's why I think it better to rip out the motherboard and replace with another AMD motherboard and get a nice Athlon XP processor and WinXP. Mike

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Well, I run Poser 5 on an AMD 1800XP(1.5 real MHZ?!) with 512Meg SDRam. But with Win ME. AT CL they wrote that WIN 98 AND ME couldnt handle more than the 128 MB. But give a "Hint" how to get around that Problem. www.curiouslabs.com/link/category/15/?df=1 Well, i dont "feel" the diffrence! ;) But that may depend on the details/Objekts/Figures in you Scene.(For example the DAZ Mil. Dragon. They wrote:WARNING: The Millennium Dragon is a highly detailed model made of over 60,000 polys and will tax some machines ....." So for me it seems that you need the fastest CPU you can get AND as much RAM as your Board can handle AND Win XP? ;)) And after a Week this machine will be tooo slow too! ;)

Give it a shot of ram? Hey I have a question cyjoe??? my PC chokes on a 20mb Poser scene? But, C4D can handle a 200mb scene with no problem??? I'v got a 3.0ghz 512?ram I am trying the above link..thanks for the tip..

Yep, I build PCs and am a technician for Purdue University. RAM is the key. Your 750mhz processor should be fine. Another idea would be to upgrade your video RAM or video card. I use ATI cards almost exclusively. I would suggest maybe a 32mb or 64mb ATI Radeon. I, myself, use the ATI ALL IN WONDER due to it's awesome video capture/output capabilities. ;) The machine I use is a dual board operating on 2 P3 733mhz processors and with 1gb of sdram. I'll soon be upgrading it to 1.5gb of ram. This machine is faster than my brother's 1.4 ghz P4 but then my ram is more than double his. Also under the performance tab in "system" (under control panel) change your machine to "network server" and change the virtual memory to use a min of 1-2gb of hd space and max of half of your free HD space. This will boost performance dramatically. No wise tech allows windows to manage the virtual memory ;) Just my thoughts, ----Will

Hi Will, Thanks! I had installed an ATI radeon 9000 pro a few months ago and I'm glad I did! I have a Jabil K7 motherbaord that uses the SlotA processor. Problem is that ADM no longer makes a 1Ghz slotA processor and no one has any to sell. I found one for $265.00 too rich for my blood I can get a motherboard/CPU combo for less. I've never messed with the virtual memory because I really don't know what to do with it and I'm chicken...LOL!But now that you've told me what to set the virtual memory I know what to do. My next machine I am building. I might just gut this gateway and use the case and put my own stuff in it. Thanks again, Mike

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Yeah Mike I'll swear by the ATI cards. They are great cards for anything 3D. Be it games or renderings from hi end 3D applications, ATI is my recommendation. If you set your virtual mem to those figures, you should see a good increase in performance... less lock-ups and crashes due to running out of mem. For even better performance, I'd recommend defragmenting your hd once a month even if windows says it doesn't need it. Your hd won't need to work as hard then. :)

Just always remember that Virtual Memory uses hard drive space as memory so you will see a bit of decrease in your hard drive space depending on how large your HD is. Whatever your minimum is set to is what windows will reserve from the hard drive for the page file (the file that is used for Virtual Memory). The maximum setting allows windows to increase the page file size as necessary (if necessary). Hope that helps you to understand a bit better. :) ----Will

Yup, I can see better performance. Even after setting the VM I still have 11.0 Gb left on my HD. I some tell me not to get ATI but I did a lot of research and ATI kicked butt! Thanks again, my system is running alot more smoother. Even getting on line is faster and pages load faster as well. Mike

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Hey Will got another question, What is a refresh rate for a monitor. I know I was looking at the advanced options on my ATI card there was something there about refresh rates. Thanks, Mike

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Refresh refers to the speed to which your video card will refresh the display. It affects the flicker rate of the monitor. The faster the refresh, the less your monitor will flicker. Refresh rate is measured in hertz and generally 75HZ is pretty good. Most display adapters offer two other settings which are usually "Default" (60hz-75hz) or "Optimal" which sets the refresh to the fastest rate that the detected (installed) monitor can handle. Some LCD projectors cannot handle certain refresh rates but I haven't had too much problem with modern monitors. The refresh may also change the visual size of your display since it affects both the horizontal and vertical frequencies. I usually set mine to the "Optimal Setting" but it doesn't hurt to play around and see which better suites you unless you have a VGA rather than SVGA monitor. Also if you have the improper drivers installed for your monitor, you may see adverse results. My guess is that if you don't see a problem in flicker rate on your monitor, you should be good to go ;). Refresh rate won't change any performance in your machine, renderings etc... though. If you do video editing, however, it is better to use the optimal refresh rate when outputting to video tape or any other external video recording device. ----Will

1. Why is everybody discussing video cards? ********** Poser does NOT use ANY hardware acceleration. ********** DirectX and OpenGL are not used. Poser uses a software-based 3D graphics and rendering engine. A better card will improve your gaming and 3D app editor display, but that's it. Poser remains the same. 2. The maximum amount of virtual memory that Poser likes is 4GB. Anything over that can lead to Poser crashing. This is from experience and CL's FAQ. 3. Although I also really like ATI cards, I've had to switch to nVidia because ATI does not support stereoscopics in their drivers. I use both an FPD and CRT in dual-monitor mode, with the CRT for stereoscopics. nVidia drivers (3.0.87) support both multi-monitors and stereoscopics, simultaneously on the same card (Ti 4600 chipset here)!

Yes, video cards won't do so much for Poser renders but the increase in overall system performance for the display is dependant on hardware. Regardless, display throughput performance increases with more video ram which is only available with today's sophisticated video cards. As far as VM and Poser goes, chances of using up to 4GB would be rare (you'd have to have one heck of a busy scene going on). It is better to up the VM and take the risk of a crash than to not up it and certainly risk crashes more often.

My maximum for VM on my machine is at 10GB (I have a BIG BIG HD heheh). I have never received a crash while using Poser even under a heavy load. But then again I have 1GB physical ram also. The OS I use Poser in is Win XP Pro on a multi boot system. The other OSs are WIN ME and Suse Linux.

I agree that an AGP video card with 32/64/128+MB memory will help the overall system, but it won't add a heck of a lot to Poser. Poser needs disk space, cpu power, and RAM. Concerning VM and Poser: ********************* From the FAQ: The Poser figure is invisible. Only an outline of the body is seen with the cursor on it The virtual memory is probably set very large. In the order of 4 gigs or more. Reduce the total minimum to 2 gigs or less. Restart the system. For users who have 2 gigs or more of RAM and virtual memory, a memory updater would have to be applied. For Poser 4.0.3 users, download the Poser 4.0.3 Memory Updater For Pro Pack users, download the Pro Pack Memory Updater ************************************* Using W2K Pro with 1GB DDR and 30+80GB drives. Set my VM to 8GB and this is exactly what I saw in P4PP. Set it to 4GB and, voila!, problem disappeared. This basically ends your use of Poser ad infinitum. No display, no render, no feedback at all. Can you live with that? You're very, very luck, then ... or using only Poser 5 which may not have that issue. ;)

Take notice that they are talking about the MIN setting. If you look at my earliest post, I mention setting the minimum between 1-2gb. The maximum setting doesn't apply here because that is changed on the fly only if windows needs it. The problem occurs when Poser is first executed and the amount of VM, at the time a figure is loaded, exceeds the 4gb threshhold (better chance of winning the lotto unless you've set the min at or above the threshhold). The threshhold can be exceeded without a problem while, let's say, Poser is rendering which would happen if physical plus available VM is exhausted (not very likely). A lot of programs would have a problem if the page file is larger than 4gb at execution. Some have a problem when it's only 2gb. My recommendation is always set the min at about 1-2gb. There is always an issue with older windows versions, however. Let's say WIN 98. On occasion (hehehe OK more than just occasionally) win 98 will not dump the page file like it should. However, if you set the minimum to 2gb when the system is rebooted and windows restarts, the page file will be resized back to 2gb. Server versions of windows handle this much better.... NT, 2000 PRO and XP or XP Pro

Oh yeh, I forgot to mention this, but certain versions of windows (XP being one) limit the max page file size to 4.1gb if you use the control panel utility to set the VM. This applies to the max on the MINIMUM setting as well. This was done, I'm sure, because of the threshhold limit by many programs. However, the max setting can be overridden with a few registry hacks :). I still wouldn't suggest setting the minimum value above 2gb though. And logically there is really no need to go above 3 or 4 gb on the maximum unless your an impatient bastage like me who likes to run two or three high end apps at once (while surfing the net)heheh but, of course your always risking a system crash when running too many high end apps at the same time :(. I'm pretty satisfied with XP pro and is memory handling capabilities and stability. It rarely crashes even under the heaviest of loads. ---Will

Agreed. I had set my MIN value to 4GB and MAX to 8GB. I then lowered them to MIN=2GB, MAX=4GB, and Poser worked once more. As for VM being filled, well, you've never used Poser, C4D, PhotoShop, surfed with a dozen IE windows opened (some streaming video), retrieved email, and so on, simultaneously, have you? ;) When working with a complex scene in C4D and Poser while doing textures in PhotoShop (especially procedural), it is very easy to exceed 2GB (that's 1 real, 1 VM already). If you ain't pushin' it, you don't need that much power... :)

I've got a P4 2Ghz and 1Gb of PC2700 DDR RAM, XP pro, and P5 is still slow (even after SR 2.1) However P4 flies! But then it flew with only 256Mb of RAM too, so... later jb

WOW!!! I Didn't even think such machines existed...Is all this people working for NASA, CIA or what?! By the way, it's exactly what I needed to know: now I understand I was really asking too much to my "poor" P4 256RAM - again, it's ridiculous that CL "reccomends" 256RAM for Poser5 - and that I'll have to make an upgrade that will be not exactly cheap... Thanks Mike and to all the other ones who posted a reply. Alberto

Oh, I see that you have tried your utmost to crash Windows. Nevermind... ;0P Since XP Pro is mainly a dressed up 2K Pro, they have similar capabilities. If I could get XP Pro to install successfully on my good system (2.53 P4, 266MHz bus - on which it wouldn't after many attempts), I'd love to. OTOH, I'd also like a dual Xeon or Athlon system for C4D's sake, anyway. No can do at this juncture. You know as well as I that within the next couple of years the standard amount of memory will be 2 to 4GB DDR or RamBus (or whatever evil "standard" is adopted next). This will likely push the need for higher VM settings just by virtue of larger apps with larger data pools to accomodate whatever new features are introduced by then. The new P4 Hyperthreading, which is another excellent reason to migrate to XP Pro, is already changing the market.

Ok! Well, pass the peas...Hey! the bread is getting cold.. Oh my gosh!!!is that Grandmas old fashion candy yams?????