Hi guys,

I have Poser 6 and it runs really slow. I defrag almost every day, I empty cache and run virus and spyware scans almost daily. I have a P4 3.8Ghz CPU, 1.5GB ddr2 running at 667. I have a nvidia 7600gt oc graphics card ( PCI-E ) and a 160GB Maxtor HDD which spins at 7200rpm.

When I'm in Poser I Always like to view the scene in Full mode instead of FAST or BOX mode. I just like to be able to see where everything goes, but it's so slow. Do i need more memory or a better graphics card or a complete rebuild. BTW i'm running Windows XP, I won't touch vista untill SP1 is released.

That's a pretty decent setup. It should run Poser 6 with ease. The graphics card should do fine, the CPU is fast enough, and you have enough RAM. A little bit more never hurts, but 1.5 GB should be enough to run P6 comfortably.

First, do you have Symantec or McAfee virus scan running in the background? If so, 30% of your computing power is gone. I NEVER run a resident virus scanner, I always do manual scans, for this reason.
Other virus scanners are less greedy when it comes to system resources, but they all take up RAM and CPU cycles.

Second, you can speed things up a lot by changing the graphics card settings. In the nVidia control panel, you can set the performance/quality settings per application. For Poser it's best to set all those setting to maximum performance. No 8x antialiasing, no trilinear filtering, etc. etc.

Third, in XP you can also set some display properties. Right-click the My Computer icon, choose Properties, tab Advanced,  and the Performance button. Set the visual effects to "Adjust for best performance."

In this same dialog you can adjust your page file/virtual memory settings. It might be that you have a heavily fragmented page file - the Windows defragmentation tool can't handle that. Set the page file manually, maximum size and minimum size equal, at 2 times your physical RAM (3072 MB in your case). 
Best to do this right after a defragmentation run. 

What exactly is slow? What's in your scene when Poser is slow?

" When I'm in Poser I Always like to view the scene in Full mode instead of FAST or BOX mode"

This, I believe would be a function of the RAM on board your Video Card.  I've always been told the RAM on a video card if for Display Purposes; i.e. let's say you are at one camera, and then switch to another, if your card does'nt have enough RAM to remember what the view from the first camera looked like, switching back to it will take extra time, because your computer will need to rerender the Preview.

The amount of RAM you need depends on; the size of your scene, how big you want to render, and then Render Settings.

I run an amd athlon cpu , 2 ghx, 512 meg memory and 32 meg is shared video ram .

I dont notice a slowdown with full tracking mode and texture display unless I have 4 to 6 figures loaded .

You can set display mode for each element in the scene , so you can have only the figure you are working with in texture mode and all the rest shaded .

I would check virtual memory setting . I find the default of 3 times real memory insufficient for graphics work. I set it to system managed and just let it use what it wants .

Disk defrag every month or two is sufficient for me .

I have V4.2 with Juni hair and Milan texture applied and two infinite lights at 1000 x 1000 and it takes forever to move the model around via the posing camera etc etc. i've also did what svdl has suggested this has improved it somewhat, but not to the degree I'd hoped for. But thankyou.

You can try playing around with the preview render settings (Render -> Render Settings, Preview tab), although there's not much in Poser 6 only Open GL (Software / Hardware) and SreeD. If it stays the same for all 3 settings, then it's not graphics card related.

Attached Link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Also check the drivers for everything else you use such as Motherboard and Audio. Check with the manufacturer of the board for those.

Good luck,

FlyerX