As I get more into animation as opposed to still work, I've decided to purchase a new PC. Presently, I'm running a P3 with over a Gig of RAM. I forget the particulars of the graphics card. But presently, rendering in Poser takes forever. What should I get that will give me the best render time for Poser and Lightwave? Can you give me some idea how long it takes other animators to render shorts from these apps? I know that depends on content, but really any guidance you can give me is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

No matter what software you're using, rendering is a CPU intensive process. It has nothing to do with your graphics card unless you're using a special card that does do rendering, but I doubt it. That said, the best advice would be to get the biggest, fastest CPU you can afford... the processor needs to be a monster, and the more RAM you have, the better. Poser and Lightwave are on opposite ends of the spectrum, and in a way, Poser is going to limit you ALWAYS as to how fast it will render. The reason is that it does not take advantage of multithreading or dual processors. I would have advised you to go with a VERY fast dual processor, but it wouldn't help you with rendering in Poser. Niether would a pro-level graphics card. Poser just doesn't use them. More RAM can help with Poser though. So, if you're using Poser for rendering, you're kinda stuck. The very things that will make other apps render much faster don't impact speed in Poser very much. Still, a fast processor and more RAM is the way to go. A top notch graphics card will help you with onscreen redraws of geometry and real-time shading in Open GL, but again... NOT in Poser.