What's the best computer system to run Poser?

    Many people have asked what the best hardware configuration would be to run Poser. This is a complex question as hardware specifications and the ways in which the hardware interacts with the operating system change on an ongoing basis; without making any specific recommendations as to particular brands of hardware or specific processors or video cards, we can provide the following observations-

1. The video card you use generally won't have a major impact on your renders unless those renders consist mostly of preview-rendered animations. Firefly, the Sketch render engine and the Poser 4 engine all render entirely in software and make no use of the GPU whatsoever, so spending money on a high-end video card is wasteful for probably 75% of the work that people do. That being said, if your work consists mostly of animations for which an OpenGL preview render is adequate, then a high-performance video card may be a good investment; a tenth of a second's decrease in render time per frame can add up over the course of several 900-1200 frame animations, and the longer the sequence, the more time you'll save with a faster card. But this is only in that one particular case; for stills, sketches, toon renders or photorealistic video, the graphics card is not a major factor. That being said, a graphics card that supports OpenGL 1.5 or 2.0 is required for Poser's hardware previews.

2. Posers 5 and 6 didn't take advantage of multi-processor or multiple-core systems; Poser 7's version of the Firefly render engine, though, can utilize up to 4 processors or cores and can run as a separate process. Thus a multiprocessor system is a good choice if you have (or are considering) Poser 7 as renders will finish much more quickly. The system bus speed, RAM amount (and speed) and the speed of the hard drive also will affect the overall speed of the render.

3. As mentioned above, hard drive speed does have a significant impact on Poser's performance, especially if you're unlucky enough to require the use of virtual memory. In any case, it's total throughput speed, not just rotational speed, that makes the difference. You should also make sure that your hard drive has adequate space and is properly defragmented, of course, and the bus speed also makes a difference. Poser uses the main system swap partition for its own swapping, unlike Photoshop and some other applications that allow you to determine which drive to use.

4. In general, the more physical RAM your system has, the better Poser will perform, especially in rendering. 1Gb is a good amount for most tasks, but if your work involves high-resolution photorealistic images (2000x2000 pixels or larger) or photorealistic video sequences, 2Gb or more will improve render times and general performance although since Poser is still a 32-bit application it can't itself address more than 2Gb of physical RAM. Using RAM rated to match the speed of the motherboard's RAM bus avoids a potential bottleneck (albeit a fairly minor one) as data moves from RAM to the processor(s).

---

Source:
http://graphics.smithmicro.com/article/articleview/1470/1/861/
 

"'you shut up!  or I'll bring democracy to your country! "
Cris Galvão aka Softcris  - www.crisgalvao.com
(or softcris, SoftCris)
Rendering since 1997 and
at Renderosity since 1999.
OS Win 8.1     64 bit

Quote - since Poser is still a 32-bit application it can't itself address more than 2Gb of physical RAM

True, up to a point. Poser 7 and FFRender are compiled with the /LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag, which means these 32 bit apps can use up to 4 GB of address space, depending on the OS. XP 64 bit and Vista 64 bit allow Poser 7 to use those 4 GB, XP 32 bit (Home/Pro, but not Media Center) can allow Poser 7 up to 3 GB of address space when you use the /3GB startup switch in boot.ini

Poser 6 unmodified behaves as a classical 32 bits app, unable to address more than 2 GB. The Poser 6 executable can be edited to behave as if it were compiled with /LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

My gallery   My freestuff

5. there will be no further SRs for poser 7 IMVHO, in case anybody is still experiencing
   problems.

6. feel free to try to render 900 - 1200 frames in one session if extremely patient and lucky,
   but in the final animation, be certain to cut to a new scene every 50 - 100 frames or you'll lose
   yer audience IMVHO.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this information softcris.

welcome!
trues and lies about the application
I can see it render (Poser 7 w/sp2) sometimes to 3,1 Gb and using 100% of my 4 cpu...unfortunelly others it render using 20% max. and about 1 GB ram..it's TOTALLY  by it's MOOD (since I can't find another word for it; today rendering 1 M3,1V3,1 A3 with only Body Glove and simple hair each one nothing more...the most simple light - it start to give messages 'problems to render' etc.. finally quivering and begging it went to final I had only about 4 steps further draft.)Some days of good humor it renders complex scene of about 180 Mb or more, in FireFly Full- Final big size and all  and does not stops to 'think' goes at once..
Now you tell me what is that? Spirits?

"'you shut up!  or I'll bring democracy to your country! "
Cris Galvão aka Softcris  - www.crisgalvao.com
(or softcris, SoftCris)
Rendering since 1997 and
at Renderosity since 1999.
OS Win 8.1     64 bit

Poser 7 will use up to 4GB of memory on Windows 64-bit - if and only if (for some logic) that memory is available.  If you have 4GB, it ain't gonna use 4GB because a portion of that is already in use for the OS, drivers, services, other software.  On the other hand, if you have more - say, 8GB like me ;) - it should be capable of using the full amount.

My thoughts - a 64-bit OS with 4GB or less is a waste.  What does 64-bit addressing give you?  A way to have more than 4GB and use it.  That's it (besides side-effect advantages).

Don't knock it until you've tried it. ;)

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

I think the problem with my configuration is the single HD.  I'd like to have (but can't afford) a solid state C: drive.  I also think having my textures on a seperate drive from my system would speed things up.  Or maybe seperate read/write drive when rendering animations.  I don't really know what goes into RAM, but common sense tells me that my dual core opteron is being held back by the one drive. 

Quote - I think the problem with my configuration is the single HD.  I'd like to have (but can't afford) a solid state C: drive.  I also think having my textures on a seperate drive from my system would speed things up.  Or maybe seperate read/write drive when rendering animations.  I don't really know what goes into RAM, but common sense tells me that my dual core opteron is being held back by the one drive. 

In this case your common sense is wrong. Any access to any HD is slow and it doesn't make much difference how many you have or what type unless the program is moving around large volumes of data (like copying large files). For any program that does a lot more than just moving data the difference between accessing one or two drives are so small that they can be ignored. Writing is anyhow buffered and happens completely independent of your program. Reading is in most cases optimized by both the OS and the drive. Multithreading will make sure the processor will be kept busy while the drive figures out how to get the data as quick as possible. It is a shame that Poser 7 has implemented this so poorly but other rendering solutions allow you the use your processors flat out even while waiting for I/O in one or more threads.

Quote - Poser 7 will use up to 4GB of memory on Windows 64-bit - if and only if (for some logic) that memory is available.  If you have 4GB, it ain't gonna use 4GB because a portion of that is already in use for the OS, drivers, services, other software.

That's only true, if for you memory means "RAM". But althoug Poser won't use 4GB of RAM, it'll still use 4GB of virtual memory, no matter if that comes from RAM or swap file.

What turned out to be a good idea (after throwing away my 8 GB Ram capable mainboards and installing 16 GB to the new ones (under XPP x64),  was to install a 150 GB WesternDigital Raptor HDD. I've got the OS and (amongst 2 other app's ) Poser 7 incl. the runtime on this HDD, everything else - images, pz3's, backups and so on - are kept on different dumb (cheap...) 500 GB HDDs.
As soon as I have made my second million (I failed making the first one) I'll try to separate OS and applications to 2 Raptors.

I don't know (nor do I care) how much Ram is P7 using of the 16 GB available - what counts for me is, that it's stable.

The Raptor HDD makes even opening P7 fun - just enough time to light a cigarette  where I could easily smoke a cigar before. And the whole thing is definitely fast.

A fine trick a friend showed me was to cross-clone the runtime folders of the two machines I use for renders - it's not multinode rendering, but at least I can have two machines working on renders of the same topic.

And now I'm waiting for P7Pro, with the render farming they promised (about half a year ago...)

...waiting...

...waiting...

www.skin2pix.com

Quote - Poser 7 will use up to 4GB of memory on Windows 64-bit - if and only if (for some logic) that memory is available.  If you have 4GB, it ain't gonna use 4GB because a portion of that is already in use for the OS, drivers, services, other software.  On the other hand, if you have more - say, 8GB like me ;) - it should be capable of using the full amount.

My thoughts - a 64-bit OS with 4GB or less is a waste.  What does 64-bit addressing give you?  A way to have more than 4GB and use it.  That's it (besides side-effect advantages).

Don't knock it until you've tried it. ;)

well I have 64 bits XP last sp and two Video cards latest OpenGL, etc..running SLI right now and 8 Gb ram uyes EIGHT the stupid application takes max 3, something  Gb and as I said..depending on it's mood
just for fun, and obsevation I just render A3 with a texture naked no hair. Took eternally (well for simplicity of the rending I mean)
bull total about when you make animation..I had made several dynamic dresses in V3 and V4 and max 130 frames - does not speeds up. Does not uses all 4 Gb  as it's supposed and not takes advntage of my 4 CPU...total mistake from my part to buy such expensive system...well waters under the bridge anyway.

BTW I had also a 75 GB WesternDigital Raptor HDD. which gave me no more speed to Poser. so decide to use for soemthing else and give Poser a 500GB single external HD WD as well but 7200 rpm - whic I made tests to see if was any difference w/ system today and the external drive and Sata internal...no..none..makes the rendering of that 'benchmark' you know the one done by many of us...in 4 min. as in one HD or the other! Proff of males no difference...
As they say you can never say if this or that will work best in you rig unless you use it and test it.
BIG   ;(

"'you shut up!  or I'll bring democracy to your country! "
Cris Galvão aka Softcris  - www.crisgalvao.com
(or softcris, SoftCris)
Rendering since 1997 and
at Renderosity since 1999.
OS Win 8.1     64 bit