i just bought a quad core system but poser 7 takes forever to render a scene that takes only 10 minutes on my athlon 64 i set up the same render settings same figure same lighting and same render size,same bucket size,same threads-2 , i set the system to performance on both the video card and in vista power settings nothing seems to get it crankin even close to the old amd any help would be great

Try changing to threads to 4, so you use all 4 cores.

that still doesnt make any difference to the render time
when the shops are open monday im goin 4 a cheap stop watch and and experiment with further setting adjustments and race my 3 machines againsnt each other- the new one a quad core, a dual core and a amdathlon

Quote - that still doesnt make any difference to the render time
when the shops are open monday im goin 4 a cheap stop watch and and experiment with further setting adjustments and race my 3 machines againsnt each other- the new one a quad core, a dual core and a amdathlon

Very interesting. I recently picked up a quad core also. I run Poser 7 on a G5 2.33 dual core Mac, and was wondering if I should pick up Poser 7 for it. I currently use Poser 6 on the quad core, and my dual core Mac seems to render just as fast as the quad core pc. I'm not comparing apples to apples though, using Poser 6 on the Quad and Poser 7 on the mac. I'd be intertested in your findings.

I used Poser 6 on a dual core and Poser 7 on a dual core, then a quad core then on Vista64bit. With each upgrade i saw significant improvements. I did have to optimize poser for quad core, as mentioned earlier, set up 4 seperate threads in preferences and render in a seperate process. Also Compare times very carefully, using the same type of lights, the same raytrace bounces and make sure you are on SR3

Something that also helps - ditch Vista and install Windows XP 64 bit (getting hard to come by, alas).
Caveat - check hardware support first. Mainboard should be no problem printers can be troublesome (for example, HP has removed the XP 64 bit drivers for the HP PSC2100 series all-in-ones from their site), scanners are definitely trouble.
So are ATI graphics cards. nVidia has good XP 64 bit support (and good Linux support), ATI has none to speak of.

@thartwick: do pickup Poser 7 for that quad! You'll find that rendering will be at least twice as fast as on the G5. Poser 6 has a single threaded renderer, so it will only use 1 of the 4 cores, while Poser 7 can calculate at least some parts of the render using 4 threads.
Don't expect quadruple speed - Firefly isn't that smart or efficient. But you can expect about double the render speed (YMMV - a LOT depends on the scene contents and layout).

 Running Poser 7 on a quad core Mac Pro. when I set 4 threads in the Preferences under Render, I am getting quire impressive render times. It really is much faster and has changed my work flow. But as pointed out above, each process gets a quadrant of your image and if all the complex stuff is in one quad, the other three will finish pronto and you will still have to wait for one processor to grind away.

Quote - Something that also helps - ditch Vista and install Windows XP 64 bit (getting hard to come by, alas).
Caveat - check hardware support first. Mainboard should be no problem printers can be troublesome (for example, HP has removed the XP 64 bit drivers for the HP PSC2100 series all-in-ones from their site), scanners are definitely trouble.
So are ATI graphics cards. nVidia has good XP 64 bit support (and good Linux support), ATI has none to speak of.

@thartwick: do pickup Poser 7 for that quad! You'll find that rendering will be at least twice as fast as on the G5. Poser 6 has a single threaded renderer, so it will only use 1 of the 4 cores, while Poser 7 can calculate at least some parts of the render using 4 threads.
Don't expect quadruple speed - Firefly isn't that smart or efficient. But you can expect about double the render speed (YMMV - a LOT depends on the scene contents and layout).

Thanks. I'll have to save a few pennies and pick it up!!!

so how do i speed up my renders? im on xp with a dual core. i read somthing about threads, how do i change mine to render faster?

Im going to buy a new Pc in about a week for Poser 7, Blender, Lightwave 7, Bryce and Photoshop 7

Heres the specs of one Im considering thats in my affordable range:
Win Vista 32 bit
MD AthlonTM X2 4400 Dual-Core Processor , NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE Graphics with TurboCache with 128MB dedicated graphics memory. 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM memory

What do you guys think?

decent spec computer , same as mine exept for the graphics card - mines ATI not g-force :)

wespose: I advise you to wait and save up for some more power. That is a low end machine nowadays.

For Poser 7, I'd recommend the following:
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU (Q6600 or better, but even the cheapest quad outperforms the 4400 by a factor of 2)
4 GB DDR2-800 (2x2 GB, so you can upgrade to 8 GB when desired)
nVidia 8500 GT or better for graphics. Definitely NOT ATI, their OpenGL is still wonky, and forget about 64 bit support.

Bryce will also be quite happy with a more powerful CPU.

Stick to XP. Vista consumes far too many resources all by itself. Windows 7 will be better (resource usage comparable to XP, according to a beta tester), but it won't be here until late 2009.

XP Pro 64 bit will run fine on a machine as described above, but printer drivers, scanner drivers, tablet drivers and wireless network drivers might be troublesome - first check hardware support!
Why XP Pro 64 bit? Since Lightwave and Poser will really enjoy the extra memory space it provides: Vista 32 and XP 32 only give you 2 GB per application, XP 64 bit will give 128 GB of (virtual) memory per application - if the application can make use of it. Poser 7 can use up to 4 GB on a 64 bit OS, Lightwave 7 might be able to use the full 128 GB of address space, for Bryce it doesn't matter, and for Photoshop 7 it doesn't matter either.

Again, don't buy ATI: that'll rule out the XP 64 bit option. And you're as good as hosed if you want to run Linux too.

svdl - thanks for the advise. I wrote down those specs and will shop around with them in mind!
My current situation is that my wife wants to buy me a new pc for a bithday present and a $1,200 qaud core 8 gig animation powerhouse is not going to happen right now.  Seeing that Im just doing single frame artwork but would like to render more complex lighting, add more props and figures and cut some of the render time down. Hey if you want a good laugh, my current specs...384 mb Pc100, Pentium 3 (1), No graphics card, 12 GB HD, XP home ( 3 installs have been used already)!

How do I change the number of processors used by Poser 7 on my quad core?  where do I change the number 'threads or processors?  I cannot seem to find it.

Thanks for any reply other than 'You are a moron!'

menu Edit->General Preferences, tab Render. Set the number of threads to 4.

You can also set Poser to render in a separate process. This will enable you to render more complex scenes, since Poser has a limit of 4 GB per process, and the separate render process won't have the overhead of a user interface.
Renders will be slightly slower than rendering in the Poser process itself, since inter-process communication takes some time.
Unlike what some other poster has stated, if you do not render in a separate process, Poser will still use as many cores as you have set the threads to.

Thank you!