Greetings. I see all of this great work, rendered in an extensive list of 3d programs, with breathtaki'n light effects, resolution, etc... And when i try to apply one of those quality settings on my (pseudo) projects, my pc just squeezes in pain. I wonder if anyone could tell me what system requirements are most apropriate/recomended to render those projects. I currently have a 1.7 mhz celeron processor, with 256 of RAM and a G-force graphic card (64Mb).

If you're using anything more recent than Windows 98 your operating system will be using most of your RAM. You'd notice a real difference if you put in another 512 Mb, or even 256 Mb if your budget is tight.

With a 1.7 MHz cpu, you could probably run your microwave or MP3 player (maybe). I hope you mean 1.7 GHz. . . ;-) markd

This is what I run normally. My main render box, is a custom (home) built Athlon 64 3200 box, 1GB PC3200 RAM thats 400DDR. NVidia FX5600 card with 128MB video ram. About a combined amount of 920GB of drive storage available. I run WIndows XP Pro (just waiting for longhorn to get the 64Bit extensions) The system screams normally, I have a Gigabyte Triton Nvidia NForce 350 motherboard. To give you an idea of how long a decent render takes. If I render an object with about 200 elements Say 20-25 light sources, some transparent and semi transparent items and dont forget refractions, A single frame render at 1600x1280 300Dpi (I use a lot of these for print), takes about 1 week to 10 days. This is on just the one machine. Most renders take a lot less, overnight for the megastar class starship model I have in my gallery. Transparency seems to eat the most memory and cpu time. I would definitely consider upgradeing memory at least, a faster CPU wouldnt hurt, the Celeron caching is not the best, which can slow down renders, a real P4 or Athlon chip would work better.

Thanks guys, i definetly need an upgrade! Sorry about the "mhz" thing ;-)