I have a Dell Dimension 4600. Recently upgraded hard drive to a Sata 350GB.

However, my system dogs when I try to do anything like posing or moving the camera in Poser 8. So... I'm thinking that my graphics card is the culprit. Currently it is a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 that has 381 MB total memory.

What is the best one out there (within a reasonable cost) to help my Poser work be much less time consuming? Does anyone have a graphics card they are really happy with?

You don't need a high end expensive graphic card for Poser.  You only need one if you are into those massive online role play games where you need rapic acceleration.  With Poser you can get along more than just fine with a cheap card.  When I had my computer built, I went with a new NVIDA that was 2 years older. Paid $75.00 for it.

So many people think that they need the biggest and most expensive of everything for it to work.  But they very often over buy what they need.

I'm using an old Geforce 9500GT I got for $45, running 2 LCD's... works fine for Poser :D

Card isnt so much the issue as others have posted... Im running a very, very old 7 series Nvidia on my PC.. mainly due to my migration to Mac but it runs just dandy.

Card has little impact on poser itself but can have on general way of working.  A higher resolution can help you when creating your renders since in most cases provides a smoother and calmer way of looking at your screen. If your card a a high RAM it will help performance overall. But agree JUST for poser CPU and system memory are more important. Good luck with shopping

actually if it'll help

mines a Geforce 9500gt, 1GB ram driving 2 17" LCDS at 1280x1024 over DVi.

and that works with a 350watt (damn you Dell) PSU.

I have the same exact card as Magnus Greel. Works fine for me for Poser. What you need more to consider is what other programs you run...some programs do like a graphics card with more oomph. Poser doesn't ;o).

Laurie

The only thing that may improve with a new graphics car is the OpenGL preview. A newer card may be able to handle more items in the preview and show you better textures in the preview. I'm saying may on purpose, since it's not always the case, but in your case it will be.

The FX5200 is quite old and isn't capable of handling all the newer OpenGL features. If you upgrade to a newer card you will see a good improvement in the quality of the OpenGL preview in Poser. Also the preview update speed will be improved and a newer card with more memory will also be able to correctly show all items in more complex scenes.

Otherwise, rendering and such you will not see any improvement at all.

I agree with Aeilkema. I just had a new system built and splurged on a 460-series NVidia card. Things like working the morphing brush, moving the camera around figures, all that stuff that happens in the pose room just goes smoother and faster. I can have a fairly complex scene - well, complex for me - and everything moves smoothly in the Pose room. So, it was worth it.

Doesn't make a whit of difference in render speed. The 64-bit Win 7 OS and PP2010 taking advantage of it does.

Quote - You don't need a high end expensive graphic card for Poser.  You only need one if you are into those massive online role play games where you need rapic acceleration. 

Depends on the MMO really.  Games like AoC and FF14 have a pretty high demand for graphics but not all of them do.  There's also a lot of non-mmos that make your GFX card squeal like a pig.  It really depends on what it is being asked to do and how quickly.   It also depends on how much butt you want your graphics to kick and if you are willing to sli it and upgrade your PSU... maybe cooling too.

BTW, poser is rendered in the processor and not the GFX card.

"BTW, poser is rendered in the processor and not the GFX card."

and the preview (which we're concerned about - read the first post, they have a FX5200 which was a very bad card) is on the GFX card (we're not talking rendering here).