Hello, Poser Community! I'm purchasing a new system primarily for Poser 5 and Pro Pack. I considered building my own system until a DAZ tech told me that component incompatibilities can cause problems with Poser 5. So..I decided to buy one instead. Which off-the-shelf system would any of you recommend, if any? I'm considering the following: HP Pavillion, Dell XPS or Dell Dimension 8300 or Gateway 700XL. I'm considering a system configured as follows: h 3.2GHz (HT) Pentium 4 h Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition OR Professional Edition? (Which do you think is best? I was actually leaning toward Windows 2000. I'm not sure about XP. Is that what you run Poser on? h 1 GB DDR / PC3200 (2 DIMM) RAM h 250 GB 7200 rpm Ultra DMA Hard Drive h 128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9800(R) w/ TV-out & DVI cap Does this sound inadequate, adequate or more than adequate or on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate it? I really appreciate any feedback. I'm ready to get my Poser groove back on! :-) Help!! Thanks. Pam H 7261@ameritech.net

The 3.2GHz P4 will certainly help Poser 5, but the HT will do nothing for it. Everything else sounds good. Video card really doesn't do that much for Poser (esp. in the OpenGL end). For Poser 5, the three most important things are: 1. CPU power (GHz) 2. FSB speed 3. Amount of RAM Sounds likes you're covered. WinXP plays pretty well with Poser 5 if you get SR2 or SR3. But, recent speed comparison benchmarks have shown that Win2000 has a slight edge over WinXP. I haven't had any "component incompatibilities" with Poser 5. My first machine with it was a Gigabyte mobo, 2.53GHz Pentium 4, 1GB PC2100 RAM, GeForce4 TI 4600, Win2K Pro - all component built. The current machine has an Intel Server mobo, 2x 2.66GHz Xeons, 2GB PC2700 RAM, GeForce4 TI 4600, WinXP Pro - all component built.

IMHO, Windows 2000 works better with Poser (I teeter back and forth between XP and 2k), especially 5. I also have a Hyperthreading CPU and kuroyume is right, Poser doesn't take advantage of it regardless. To be quite honest about it, the HT technology at this point seems a bit overhyped. I don't find much of a multitasking improvement -in general- installing an OS with it on.

Well. I always build my computers, so I'll pass on those makes since I don't know them. HT for video editing can be very useful. Video card, I have the 9700pro. Make sure your mobo handles the required voltage. Make sure your power supply is over 450W. If possible try your vid card's TV In function before buying. ATI states that some makes of power supplies create interference or corruption in both the picture and sound on those ATI cards. The corruption is a shimmering of the desktop or a wave in the video IN TV function. Highly recommend that you try it first, or you may not like the results. I sure didn't. See: WWW.rageunderground.com for details. Do not follow the instructions given on some packages by ATI. It is in error. It tells you to plug the power supply cord for the video card into your hard drive. Avoid that at all costs. Plug it directly into the power supply or (for some motherboards who now have that feature) into the motherboard itself. Make sure the builder does that. The vidcard drivers: Hydravision and or desktop manager may cause problems with Poser at installation. Codetwister's Tailer would not install on my system (XP) with desktop manager loaded. Unload those before installing and restore all transparency levels to 0. Lastly: 250GB HD.... fine but only if I had SATA. Why make the system work for nothing... Sounds like a great system. Enjoy. PS: for those who had read this post before... consider this the English version. Sorry 'bout that... :))) Q

I build my own. Component incompatibility effects more than just Poser. So if you build a smooth system, Poser will run well. If you don't then nothing will run well. Personally, I use AMD chips, ASUS boards (though they are not keeping up to date and I may change to Tyan soon) and if I use more than one ram chip I make sure that they are all the exact same chipsets. Use a good quality hard drive. Maxtor is good and cheap, Western Digital is ok too. I prefer the IBM Deskstars. Use at 420 watt or better power supply. What OS and how you configure it makes a difference too. If you want to research your own homebuild, start with the CPU chip and see what boards are approved for that chip. AMD has an approved list. If you use WinNT as in Win2k or XP Pro, then there is a hardware compatibility list that MS puts out. Stay with that. ATI seems to have made a comeback with their video cards. The old radeon's suck but from the ATI 8500 and above they seem pretty smooth. You'll want a gig of ram. Less is not going to do you right over the long haul and more just drags down your OS. How you configure your BIOS also has a lot to do with it. There's a thousand variables. But if you get through them, you'll be the wiser for it. If you don't have the time then as for the systems you suggested........ Gateway --- run like the wind. get that only if they pay you to take it. HP Pavilion --- same as above. Dell is ok for a ready made system. The Dimensions line uses nvidia cards from what I can tell. That's ok for games and openGL apps like Mojoworld. I prefer ATI. The key to any system is the motherboard and I have no idea what board is used in the Dell products. So many people overlook the importance of the MB. I like Win2k but I can't scoff at XP Pro. There are advantages to having XP Pro. Win2k is pretty rock solid too, but its older technology now. XPHome doesn't excite me at all. Hope that helps.

I bought a Dell Dimension earlier this year, and it came with an ATI Radeon 9700 card, not an Nvidia. Frankly, I'd avoid Nvidia cards like the plague. They're cool when they work, but IME, they have a very high rate of failure, at least right now. We have them at my office, and they're constantly going bad. Several friends of mine have also had their Nvidia cards go bad. I've been pretty happy with my Dell. The biggest problem I've found is that the USB ports are a bit underpowered. My machine came with 8 USB 2.0 ports, but there's really not enough juice to use them all. (Of course, I have a lot of stuff connected to my USB ports: external hard drives, Zip drive, scanner, video capture device, graphics tablet, printers, etc.) A powered USB hub solved that problem, but it took me awhile to realize that was why some of my devices weren't being detected. (It's a known issue with Dells.)

Get as much RAM as you can; Poser seems to respond better to more memory than to faster processor speed. I'm hoping the best Poser system will be the new dual processor Mac G5 I have on order :-)

Some decent advice above, though keep in mind that if a person ever has some problem with some component, they tend to dwell on that (human nature) and generalize it. Opinions are also laced with personal bias and preference, so keep that in mind too. Having said that (you can apply the above to my comments as well ;)... I mostly agree with EricSD - if you're going the pre-built route, Dell might be the best choice of those mentioned. But before you take that plunge, you should also take a look at www.alienware.com and look at their Area-51 systems. These folks (and www.falcon-nw.com) built their reps on building kick-ass gaming systems and use quality components (even if you don't do games, the same parts are needed for high-performance rendering systems). Personally, I've been building my systems for the past 10 years or so and my current preferences are for: - a 2.6ghz or greater P4 (3.2 is currently the high end, so you pay a premium for those) - 1gig of memory - Gigabyte motherboards (I've been a big ABIT fan for a while now, but Gigabyte looks to have the most bang for the buck in the latest offerings) - 800mhz FSB - 420watt or better power supply - nVidia 5600 FX (or the 5900 FX, but again you pay a premium) - WinXP (either home or Pro will do) - I'd personally avoid Win2K, as it's an obsolete OS. If you want the more current/robust OS, go with XP Pro, you'll have fewer compatibility problems going forward. ...ATI and nVidia have been going head-to-head for the past few years and the latest cards from each are roughly on par with each other (ATI seems to have more or less caught up). This mostly boils down to personal preference and I've been a happy nVidia customer for years now. In general, you should avoid any 'integrated video'. Integrated gigabit ethernet is a good thing with the latest chipsets (kinda depending on the implementation) and integrated sound may be sufficient. Other things to look for on the motherboard (for future-proofing) are max FSB speed, serial ATA (SATA) and AGP Pro 8x. A good review/article on some of the latest P4 motherboards can be found here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030707/index.html ...if you read all the way through that, you should pick up a lot of useful information (some people claim Tom is biased one way or the other, but that article is mostly factual, not much subjective). He's also got articles on video cards, AMD chipsets/motherboards, etc. Good luck, - Keith

You'll want to make sure that you use either Windows 95 or Windows 98. That way, you don't give your money to the "evil empire" by purchasing the over-priced Windows XP. Then, you can join in on the fun by complaining that Poser 5 doesn't work well with Windows 98. After all, Windows 98 is only 5 years old. Five-year olds are cute. You don't want one of those "just-made" OS's. No, sir, get an OS that has stood the test of time. Better yet, just go with DOS and free up all that memory that is normally used by the Windows user-interface. This was meant as sarcasm.

My Area 51 puter just arrived from AlienWare-- when I finish transferring a huge amount of crap over to it, I'll let you know how it works with Poser. I'm working P5 and Pro, darn little with Pro lately. Alienware is sticking with XPPro lately but still using Nvidia cards. Emily

I'm trying to get a Dell XPS, 2GB of RAM, and the ATI RADEON 9800 PRO. Y'all won't believe this, but my dad ordered Windows XP, and the company sent him 15 ATI RADEON 9700 cards (!). This was about 6 months ago, and my dad has repeatedly tried to contact them, and talked with several guys, but no one seems interested in helping at the company. So we have them here, sitting in a box, collecting dust! My dad gave one away though. I'm afraid to give them away, because as soon as we give the last one away, that company will call, and say, "OK, we're ready for our cards now." And also, I don't think they're really ours to give away. But I guess that company is never going call us back. Phew. Ben