I was, how you say, dismayed to find 112M on my refurb G4 PowerMac wasn't enough to render a good scene with a textured Vicky and some props. Okay, I was ripped. On a dare, I turned Virtual Memory back on for the first time in years and upped it to 256M, then reset Poser's preferred memory to 135M. No crashes and the dreaded "Texture map could not be found or loaded" error is much, much rarer. Complex renders do indeed render. The only cost, of course, is that complex scenes are now dreadfully slow to pose on my 350MHz G4. I should, however, own up to not having a new stock G4 machine, and the microdelays you could get from mixing and matching different chip sizes (8, 8, 32, 64).

Hi Folks! duane, I'm interested in hearing more about your set up. My Mac is a lot less powerful than yours but I think I could learn a few things from your experience. The important question for me is what constitutes "complex scenes." I just upped my G3/133 tower (beige) to nearly its 384 MB RAM capacity, and allocated 180 MB to Poser. Before that I had a measley 96 MB fortified with Ram Doubler so I could "allocate" 80 MB to Poser. Complex for me means 1-3 humanoid figures, conforming clothes, 5-10 props in a combination of .obj. .3ds, and .pp2 formats, and a background imported from Bryce or Photoshop, rendered at 480 x 360 pixels. My point is it seems strange that you're having problems with rendering performance with so much memory already allocated to Poser. An extension conflict somewhere in the system perhaps? Let's discuss this more, offline if you prefer. As I said, I think I can learn a few things. Peter (Dr Zik)

I, too, ran into memory limitations when I started using Vickie (300Mz G3 blue & white). I upped the memory to 576MB (256 + 256 +64) and allocated 450 MB of it to Poser. This helped out tremendously and, now that prices are again dropping, I'm planning on filling the last slot with another 256MB chip. I also found out that when I upgreaded from OS 8.5 to OS9.04 that memory requirements for each program increased, thereby negating some of that extra memory I'd added! I can still cause Poser to choke by using very large texture files on Vickie, but for the most part, adding the memory solved most of my problems (it also makes Photo Shop do most of it's filter operations in RAM, rather than going to it's scratch disk). Jim Moore

BTW -- a friend of mine who uses a PC with 330Mhz proccessor and 128MB RAM rendered a file consisting of vickie and several props at 600 dpi and waited over 3 hours for it to finish! The same type of render on my Mac took just over 17 minutes!

I read an article a few days back on the history of the Intel and Motorola chips, and was aghast at what Intel did to cut corners to release the Pentium III and Celeron chips so quickly. Certain key innovations in chip design from the last decade were scrapped altogether to make the chips cheaper. A Celeron is a Pentium II with one of its most important parts, the instruction cache, removed, which means more memory accesses. The Pentium III is a Celeron with the instruction cache put back, but smaller than the II's, a significant math transistor removed, and a scheme for multiple simultaneous instruction processing which is hamstrung by its own design. The real problem comes with applications which were compiled in development systems like Microsoft C++ or CodeWarrior expecting different chips. The compiled code will run, but it was optimized for advantages in the earlier chips that were pulled out of the III, requiring more laborious work to execute at runtime. The article's author summed it up: if you own a PC, get one with an AMD chip. They aren't as snazzy on specs, but AMD takes the time to do the chip design right. Return anything with a PIII in it. Interestingly, most of those annoying Blue Man Group ads disappeared after this article was published. And for the record, whatever bottomless pit they kicked them into, as a Mac user I'll be more than glad to kick Jeff Goldblum in myself. The only thing those ads do for me is clarify why Geena Davis dumped him.

I learned long ago to set VM at double actual memory for running Bryce & Poser on my Macs. BTW I use Poser vs 4.0 due to conflicts with Bryce. B3D will actually open files that B4.1 (Corel) gets memory error from. B4.01 (Meta) works better.

amd chips are great..... and yes.. the intel chips..are not as perfect as some would like you to believe...LOL.. however.. it is all in the motherboard in pc.... there is two caches.. L1 and L2.... a p3 flip chip has 256mb L1 or on die cache...but because of the socket design.... high data transfer...the L2 cache is on the board..usually 512mb.... however a top end board... has 1.5GB... and then watch a p3 fly.... and i once did a render... in 21 minutes... a full bar scene... nine spotslights...10 characters... all with conforming clothes.. i think 31 figures was the total...... 21 minutes people....think about it... and that was before i learned how to turn the shadows off on some lights....LOL

Huh??? An Intel FC-PGA 370 pin PentiumIII processor has 32k of Level1 cache, and 256k of Level2 cache (on-die, running at core speed). Note that these are Kilobytes of cache, not megabytes. As far as I am aware, there are no PIII motherboards with specific cache memory onboard (which would effectively become Level3 cache). The only mainstream adoption of Level3 cache that I'm aware of are certain 'Super Socket7' motherboards with certain AMDK6 2 and 3 processors.

RAM Doubler was great for keeping multiple programs running simultaneously, particularly when the programs were not too big. Doubling real physical memory, as inyerface suggests, works well; I even had some success with tripling real physical memory. The issue was to keep the total of the RAM used by the operating system plus the RAM allocated to any one application to less than the total real physical RAM; otherwise performance degrades dramatically. The limit comes in that RAM Doubler maxes out at 256meg Virtual RAM. And Poser really likes much more than the 80-90meg that are left over after allocating inside 128meb real physical RAM after OS9 takes its chunk. So adding real physical RAM is the only practical way to get lots of memory for Poser. I allocate 192meg to Poser, and it seems to perform well enough for my relatively simple needs. - JimW

sorry typo/... is 256k... on die cache... but the L2 cache on the board........ is where this thing does it's damage.. have three times the amount of a normal mobo

Attached Link: http://developer.intel.com/design/PentiumIII/prodbref/

You are mistaken. Check the link. For the socket370 PentiumIII: 32k level1 cache 256k level2 cache On-die, running at core speed. I still can't find any PIII motherboards with onboard cache memory, and have never seen mention of them. Your suggested figures for this alleged motherboard cache (512mb - 1.5Gb) leads me to believe you are confused with normal RAM. The only Intel processors with extra cache are the Xeon versions of the PII and PIII. The 4-way and 8-way versions come with up to 2 megabytes of Level2 cache, but it is on the processor, not the motherboard.

Attached Link: http://www.weirdass.net

Right after xmas, I hooked up with a $99 for 128 Dimm at outpost.com. Don't know if its still active, but check out dealnn.com for all the lastest goodies. I now have three 256's onboard in my G4. Hunnnh-HAA!!! Mitch

1.5MB.... sorry was typo fairying.... SOYO 6VBA.... now retooled to SOYO 7VCA.... as for noraml ram.... it is 1.5GB in four slots... but no... there is a L2 cache on it of 1.5MB

Computer is just a tool. Can you compare a Rolls Royce and a Ferrari? We should concentrate on how to solve a problem.

the terminology of L2 cache..... could be what is getting us going here pjf... the board... the 6vba... does have an onboard cache of 1.5mb... and is enabled and disabled out of the bios.... and is called an L2 cache there which is what could be causing the confusion....the 6vba is a Slot 1 board.. that runs the slot or socket chip... the socket 370 on a ppg card.. that plugs into the slot... the 7vca is an updated version.. that is strictly socket 370.... and unfortunately also now comes with onboard sound...grrrrrr... as for the onboard cache it is there... both in actuality... i know i built this system... and many like it on this board... and also is clearly stated in my motherboard manual.... i could mail you the manual if you would like..????...S

No need to send the manual, I had already downloaded it and checked before I said what I did above. You are wrong. There is no onboard cache on these boards. You have misunderstood the meaning of a BIOS setting and/or an entry in the manual. It is quite clear from diagrams and photographs of the boards that there are no cache memory modules onboard. The manuals do not mention onboard cache as a feature. The manuals do not mention how to operate this alleged onboard cache memory. It is possible you are confused by the terms 'CPU Internal cache' and 'External cache'. These are just other terms for Level1 cache and Level2 cache. Level1 cache is built into the body of the core processor circuit itself - it's internal. Level2 cache is external because it is outside of the processor circuit. With Slot1 CeleronAs, PIIs and some PIIIs, the external Level2 cache is contained in chips mounted on the little board that the core processor chip sits on (and runs at half the core frequency). With Socket370 PIIIs and some Slot1 PIIIs, the external Level2 cache is actually on the same piece of silicon as the core processor, but still external to the processor circuit (and runs at full core speed). If you disable the external cache via the BIOS, you are simply turning off the Level2 cache that comes with the PIII. This will slow the system right down. Turning it on again will speed things up back to normal. External cache is enabled by default. There are also various adjustable settings elsewhere in the BIOS for how the External cache is configured. In this section it is specifically refered to as L2 cache. It is also possible to cache the BIOS itself into system memory (RAM), which has the potential to speed things up. These are the most likely candidates that have caused your confusion. I don't mean to be offensive, but I there isn't a way to say you are wrong except to say that you are wrong.

Attached Link: http://www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm

Good read, and it'll resolve some of the arguments here.

Interesting article duanemoody. The tech manuals for the athlon, p3 and p4 were worth the browse.