Hello, I am just wondering how well certain programs use quad core systems. The last time I bought a computer most of my programs didn't really utilize it so I went with a dual. The programs that I am wondering about how well they will use it are Poser (I have 7 and Poser Pro 2010 in use), DAZ Studio 3 advanced and Zbrush.

Thanks

P.S. I am not really looking for advice on what computer to get, just whether the programs will use the quad core to the best advantage. Thanks again.

Poser will use whatever cores you have once you change the number of threads in preferences.

most programs are low on CPU usage when modeling, and so on. Most pre-render duties are single threading of some sort. Hence, a fast dual is better than a slow quad. Except for some heavy duty tasks, like rendering and - in poser - dynamic cloth calculations to some extent. Then those packs fully utilize whatever you give them.
And ... for most hobbyists, rendering can quite well take place overnight, which makes it useless to speed it up.

Unless you start doing pro work, large scale (say 7000x5000) photoreal imaging, or animation. Or large scale HD video work.

This is why modern intel i7-9xx have auto-overclocking onboard when only one CPU is utilized, this way you have best of both worlds. Your preview while modeling is handled by your video-card BTW. Either in OpenGL, but in some cases even by the GPU like the nVidia CUDA pipeline. I'm not that familiar with AMD and with video ATI-cards, but recent tests are quite promising: The test shown here don’t say all, but what they tell is that ATI FirePro’s deliver 150% of the speed at 2/3 of the price from nVidia Quattro, or better. (3DWolrd 136, review on my website).

A general pitfall in all this is that people are inpatient. Change a light, rerender. Change a material, rerender. It's like recompiling code every three lines. When you work this way, you need a lot of render-work, like the above mentioned pro/animation case. Then, you have a higher need for more CPU capacity. If you don't have the capacity, and choose a adjusted workflow, you might be even more efficient.

All the best.

I have a dual processor machine with 4 gigs of RAm running Windows Xp home. It was slow rendering in Vue and Poser. I just bought an i7 950 with 12 gigs of triple channel RAM, a Geforce 9800GT 1 MB graphics card, and Windows 7 64 bit. Poser flies in rendering. I never thought it could go so fast. That's Poser PRo 2010. Vue 8 has also speeded up. I say go for the quad core with as much RAM as youu can afford.

ZBrush uses as many cores as you throw at it, as does D|S. Dont remember for sure if P7 can use more then 2 cores but P2010 can use them all. In both cases, only for rendering though as posing, dynamics etc are all single threaded AFAIK.

Poser 7 and Vue 7 did well in quad, but I'm not sure about the 6-core i7-970 or 8-core dual-Xeon. Poser cloth simulation rarely uses more than 3 threads simultaneously.

For a 32-bit windows environment, 4Gb ram is the highest meaningful amount, and you might benefit from enabling the 3G-switch (read my tutorial in case of any questions).

64bit win7 rocks in all cases, but over 4Gb ram is useful only when having many hires figures in your scene. Or in vue, having Central Park filled up with a full tree ecosystem.

Enjoy.

Thanks all

Poser Pro 2010 is a full 64 Bit Application, including Dynamics, etc... Poser 8 is 32 Bit.