Hi all,

For tax purposes I want to upgrade my system before the end of the year. Can anyone recommend the "best" PC (not Mac) hardware config for PP2014 that is currently available? The fastest render time we can squeeze out of a PC without creating a render farm? I don't do animation so a multi-cpu network is a bit of overkill just to accommodate my impatience. Is it possible to get more than a minor speed increase with the current generation of hardware?

Firefly does a pretty good job for my needs, but it is still slow compared to my brain!  I know a GPU based renderer would speed things up and I'm sure that the software will evolve to take advantage of that in time. I have played with Octane and it is certainly snappy, but still a lot of work to create/re-create all the materials in a complex image and relight everything. It's just not as efficient as staying in Poser.

For now my Intel i7 960 at 3.2 GHz quad with 12 GB RAM and Nvidia GeForce GTX660 is chugging along okay, but is there any performance benefit to be had from a new system -- or should I simply wait another year? 

Appreciate any feedback,

~R 

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