Toying with a big upgrade jump....

PookPook Posts: 121
edited December 1969 in Poser Discussion

So recently I've found myself playing with Poser a lot more than I was before, and at the same time messing around with Daz3D, but I'm starting to contemplate a serious uplift on what I'm running.

Hardware wise, I'm running an overclocked i7 2600k processor, an Nvidia 6970 graphics card and 8gb of ram, so I'll be making the step up to 16gb as my first major upgrade - that will help a lot, so I've already earmarked that one.

The next choice is a little more complex though. I'm currently running Poser 9 (it was on sale cheap at the time), alongside the 64bit version of Daz Studio. Don't get me wrong; I do like Studio, but I much prefer using Poser, and at the moment I'm only using Daz Studio to get content easily over into Poser before doing the rest of the work there.

Now I'm thinking of upgrading to Poser Pro 2014. Has anyone made the jump from the standard series of Poser to the Pro versions? If so, can I ask what benefits you saw with it all? I know that doubling my RAM and jumping to Pro should speed everything up because I'll be running the 64bit version, but is there any other advantages - or even pitfalls that I should be aware of? Or should I scrap the idea of getting Pro 2014 and jump to Poser 10?

I'm not making the jump quite yet - waiting until I get to the middle of march before I do, so I've got a little while to finish weighing up my options.

Comments

  • edited January 2014

    My last standard version was 8 (upgrade from P7) and I added a side-grade to PP2010. There are more features in the Pro series (see their website for comparison). I stuck with PP2012 upgrade and am now PP2014 (upgrade), no regrets. My system is also i7, running 64-bit windows 8, 16GB RAM. I have a mid-range nVidia card: GE Force GT640.

    If you want to create shaders, prep cloth simulations, and fiddle with hair, the Pro version is helpful. I believe that DS Pro also does similar these days, but I don't use DS much except for the toon render mode which is very efficient. PP2014 has a Fitting Room to adjust clothing; again, if you do work of that sort, it's helpful.

    If it's just compositing using third-party content, and then rendering out the scene, the Standard version is fine.

    Post edited by ibr_remote aka infinity10 on
  • PookPook Posts: 121
    edited December 1969

    My last standard version was 8 (upgrade from P7) and I added a side-grade to PP2010. There are more features in the Pro series (see their website for comparison). I stuck with PP2012 upgrade and am now PP2014 (upgrade), no regrets. My system is also i7, running 64-bit windows 8, 16GB RAM. I have a mid-range nVidia card: GE Force GT640.

    If you want to create shaders, prep cloth simulations, and fiddle with hair, the Pro version is helpful. I believe that DS Pro also does similar these days, but I don't use DS much except for the toon render mode which is very efficient. PP2014 has a Fitting Room to adjust clothing; again, if you do work of that sort, it's helpful.

    If it's just compositing using third-party content, and then rendering out the scene, the Standard version is fine.

    Thanks for that information; everything I look at makes the sidegrade very tempting... I just don't really get on with Daz enough to switch to that one on a permanent basis. I will be going up to 16gb certainly, and having looked into it more I can get 32gb on my mobo, so depending on funds that might be an option. I've also recently had a suggestion that I replace the OS and application hard drives with SSDs and also put in another SSD for swap files which would also give me a speed boost when doing the renders.

    A lot is going to come down to what my budget works out as!

  • WandWWandW Posts: 2,819
    edited December 1969

    Since performance seems to be your goal, one advantage of Poser Pro, if you have more than one machine, is that you can do remote rendering. There was recently a discussion on RDNA about using a dual Xeon server as such a render machine, running 2 copies of Windows 7 Pro in virtual machines. However, each machine renders one image; you can't split up one image between multiple machines.

    I'm not certain how well the DSON importer works in such situations; I think the generated geometry files would need to be copied to the remote machines' runtimes....

  • PookPook Posts: 121
    edited December 1969

    Render speed is certainly one of the reasons for looking at the upgrade - and I must admit I do really like the idea of things like the Fitting Room as well. I forgot how much I do enjoy Poser until I picked up 9 in the sale back at the start of November, but I think I'd prefer to be running a more recent version now, and I figure if I'm going to upgrade, I might as well move over to the pro track, rather than stay with the standard ones...

  • EmmaAndJordiEmmaAndJordi Posts: 952
    edited December 1969

    Hi! We upgraded our computers recently for better performance, and we choose these:
    - Processor i7 3770K (3.5 Ghz-3.9 Ghz)
    - RAM: as we have 2 computers, one has 16 Gb and the other 32 Gb

    Remember (we didn't and had to buy another OS for the 32 Gb computer) that if you are going to install more than 16GB you need to have Windows 7 Professional, or see what version of Windows 8 does, or check what OS can support more than 32 Gb.

    For the GPU and motherboard we choose the same brand, Gygabyte, which I think it's important because in the past, having them different used to make frequent crashes. We work with a 2 Gb card.

    In this configuration, DAZ Studio runs very fast at render, and so does Poser.

    Render mainly uses CPU and RAM, it is not needed a big graphics card. It is for the preview modes and modeling :)

  • PookPook Posts: 121
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for reminding me about the version of windows restricting my memory limits! I'd forgotten all about that one. Since I'm just running Windows 7 Home Premium, I guess that means I've got a 16gb cap. So that's one less thing to think about!

  • EmmaAndJordiEmmaAndJordi Posts: 952
    edited December 1969

    yes! We didn't knew, so did the man at the computer shop. So we had to take 16 gb from one machine, and put them in the other, and get the Professional version LOL!

    We have to say that the one with 16 Gb it runs very well anyway :)

  • Lissa_xyzLissa_xyz Posts: 6,116
    edited December 1969

    Make sure your Home Premium is 64bit. If it's 32bit you'd still be looking at a 4GB ram ceiling.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,959
    edited December 1969

    Both W7 Home Premium and W7 Pro included two DVDs, one for 32 and one for 64 bit, when I bought them.

  • PookPook Posts: 121
    edited January 2014

    Yes - it's definitely the 64bit version of windows, thankfully - so that's one less worry!

    Edit - now I'm paranoid about it, but I know I'm running the 64bit version of Daz3d Studio, so it has to be the 64bit version, right?

    Post edited by Pook on
  • TheWheelManTheWheelMan Posts: 1,014
    edited December 1969

    Poser Pro comes with both 32-and 64-bit versions, so you can use it on whatever you have.

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,583
    edited December 1969

    dj.pooka said:
    Yes - it's definitely the 64bit version of windows, thankfully - so that's one less worry!

    Edit - now I'm paranoid about it, but I know I'm running the 64bit version of Daz3d Studio, so it has to be the 64bit version, right?

    Yes, if the 64-bit version of DS is running on it, you have a 64-bit OS.

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