Why are they so high for the Mac? Mac req: minimum 1.25 ghz G4 processor PC req: minimum 1ghz Pentium 3 processor This leaves a lot of Mac users in the dust if these are truly the minimum requirements for vue4 pro. I assume if you have a DUAL 1ghz g4 this would qualify as the minimum - but sheesh not everyone has rushed out and bought g5s already. A 1.25 was the top of the line before they announced the g5s. Our old top of the line is the for Vue4 pro??? Tell me it isn't so : ( Is this possibly a misprint and these are the recommended requirements but not the minimums. Lynn if you are listening I would love to see this clarified. Anyone else can chime in too. Scott

Hi Scott !

Why would E-on set a lower minimum requirement for MACs ?

According to the Cinebench 2003 (raytracing benchmark) a 1.25 Ghz G4 gives approx. the same performances than a 1 GHz Pentium 3 - around 110 CB-CPU. This is a very weak result.

A 1 GHz processor is the bare minimum for 3D applications, especially ray-tracers.

:) Eric

Thanks for replying Eric. My big problem with this is the minimum requirements for vue4/mover4 were a mere 300mhz G3! Other than adding the features in pro (that aren't already in mover4 why is there a sudden jump to a top of the line 1.25ghz G4 as the minimum? Apple and Intel hardware don't compare clock for clock due to RISC vs. CISC architecture and I question cinebench as a cross-platform test. Regardless of this what would suddenly make them ask for a machine that it 3x faster than the old minimum - some of mover4s stuff is what comes with Vue4 pro (vibration, spin, hypervue and rendercows). And as far as I have read the raytracer and overall renderer are more efficient than the one in old Vue4 - so this seems to be a huge jump to me. Now do you see what I am saying? What if the PC minimum was all of a sudden a 3ghz P4? that is the kind of jump we just made for requirements on the Mac. Scott

Hi Scott,

Cinebench 2003 is a true cross-platform test that uses MAXON's cross-platform Cinema 4D rendering engine. Other 3D benchmark will give you similar results (Lightwave, Bryce, etc...). You don't even need a benchmark utility, rendering the same 3D scene on a PC and MAC with any 3D software is enough to see the differences.

For 3D applications, Apple G4 and Intel Pentium 4 compare clock for clock. The Pentium 4 is even slightly faster at similar clock speed for tasks such a real-time display shading, photon mapping, radiosity calculation and ray-tracing. Let's face it: motorola's G4 chip, Altivec and RapidIO are totally outdated technologies. Luckily, this will change with the Apple G5 (that benefits from IBM's PowerPC 970 processors, IBM's Velocity Engine and AMD's HyperTransport).

I can understand your concerns. If the minimum requirement for Vue4/Mover4 were a 300 MHz G3 Processor, then a 1,25 GHz one seems quite a "jump". But, 300 MHz is really a joke. Every 3D application will crawl on it. The new requirements are more realistic.

Remember that VUE pro was designed for animation. For still images slow display refreshing rates and long rendering time are tolerable, but for 3D animations you need a fast CPU (or even a rendering farm).

E-on could keep the old requirement. I'm sure that you can run VUE pro on a 300 MHz G3. But then they'll receive hundreds of e-mails asking : "VUE crashes on my G3 !", "The display refreshing takes 1 hour !", "I can't render my animation in less than 6 months !", etc...

:) Eric

Yeah - I agree that 300mhz is way too slow but I could see 800 as being reasonable. As far as renderfarm goes - I use hypervue and some of my cows are 300mhz and still get the job done - numbers truly win out over speed when rendering frames. But I agree 300 is way too slow for the main workstation. Right now I've got the dual 1gig, a 350, a 333, and a 700 that make a pretty good team when rendering frames. Of course I'd trade it all in a minute for a new g5 - but until then... : ) As far as Vue crashing because of too slow a speed - it should only crash if there isn't enough memory - and RAM is cheap so that shouldn't be a factor. Yeah when the dust settles I'll finally be able to buy a g5 and it will be nice to have all that speed, but for now my dual 1ghz g4 better be up to the task. I'm tired of vue4/mover4 crashing on my dual 1 gig. I really hope Vue4 pro is a lot more stable. I guess cinebench really does show how outdated even g4s are now. Right now I can create some nice animations in EIU with TreePro and TreeStorm, but it would be nice to set up outdoor environments and wind in an app that is made to do pretty landscapes in the first place. I'll let you know how things go when I get my copy. My fingers are crossed. thanks for your input, Eric. Scott

I got Vue Pro today. It runs on my 800 Mhz G4 Power Mac quite good. The rendering is faster than the vue4 demo. The exporting is unstable and Vue Pro is crashing often. Especially when exporting in high resolution setting. It seems that the exporting operation is the most resource hungry.

800 is running well - that is good to hear. Damn - that is not good - exporting is one of the key features. I don't own any of the apps it can export to but that is a bad sign. Are you exporting out entire scenes? Are you doing it with the plug-ins? How is the editing of complex materials - that crashes a lot in vue4 regular. How is the openGL? Can you use it with a geforce4 MX? Have you tried animating some wind yet? That would be a good test. thanks for letting me know how its going. Mine just shipped today so it should be here sometime next week. Scott