I'm upgrading but what's the best components for Poser and CS3

[ericbshort]

I've recently purchased Poser7 and I'm currently waiting for Adobe CS Production and I'm looking for advice on upgrading my system.

This is my current PC setup
Pentium 4 - 3.00 Ghz
1Gb RAM
NVIDIA GEFORCE 6200
XP

All the reveiws I read in magazines concentrate on gamers but nothing for Poser users so I'm clueless :-(
I think I might aswell upgrade to Vista and Core Duo (NO CONFLICT PROBLEMS I HOPE)
These are some components I've been looking at...
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Abit AB9 Quad GT (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Corsair TwinX 2GB XMS2 Dominator DDR2 PC6400
GIGABYTE GV-RX195P 256-RH Graphics card

That little bundle amounts to £523 without Vista so that my max budget.
Also What version of Vista? Premium, Ultimate or will Home Basic do the job?
Thanks

 

[little_pob]

Dual Core shouldn't be a problem. NB AMD have a driver for their dual core chips, Intel don't. I'm assuming they don't have the problems AMD chipsets do (some games randomly run at double speed under AMD's X2 cpus).

Buy as much RAM as you can afford (Poser 7 can utilise 4Gb out of the box) - without skimping on the graphics card.

Re. Vista: _http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/2127/1/858/

 

[ericbshort]

Thanks pob
the vista link is a great help

I've decided to hold the MB + OS change for now and just stick in an extra 2Gb RAM and upgrade to a Nividia 7000 series GPU

I downloaded the Futuremark benchmark software (05) and got a score of 904, so lets see what improvements the changes make.
:eater:

 

[ericbshort]

Hi again

After a lt of self reasoning I've decided to invest in a second system, so I'll need a new version of Windows anyway. It would seem silly to buy a second copy of XP therefore should I go for 64Bit Vista as I'll already have an XP setup?

New Hardware
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 S775, 2.40Ghz, 1066Mhz
ASUS P5B-E Socket 75 Core2 Dual DDR2 PCI-E SATA2 GLAN USB2.0 Motherboard
Asus Geforce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Graphics Card
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB)
Corsair 1GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x512MB)

Software
Poser7
Adode Production Suite CS3
Director MX (I think this isn't Vista compatible)

 

[little_pob]

If you plan on using a scanner and printer make sure you can get the 64bit drivers for Vista before you decide to go down that route.

Also if your are going for Vista, you may as well get a DirectX 10 compatible graphics card. As far as I am aware this is currently limited to the nVidia G80 based cards (the 'budget' 8600 now available). However, older 6*** and 7*** series GFx cards will work with Vista, so you could always upgrade to an 86**/88** card when the prices come down. Presumably when ATi release their 'designed for DX10' boards

Done a quick google search for Director MX and Vista there is quite a major compatibility issue:

Can't drag and drop or copy and paste cast members onto the stage. In some cases projects won't open.

Top tip: As you are buying hardware you should be able to get the OEM version of which ever Vista flavour you want at the same time (it will cost you about half the price of a full retail version ).