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[Blick Fang]

Hi

I am thinking about getting a newer computer and was wondering what might be the best set up for Anim8or?  Will it play nicely with Win 7?

Thanks and Happy Sunday!

[Raxx]

So far for me, Win 7 Ultimate x64 is 100% compatible with Anim8or, using an AMD/ATI card no less (considering that Steve is of NVidia origins, that's saying something). My laptop's nearly 100% as well, only having an issue with drawing the rectangle select border when dragging a selection. The operating system is Microsoft's best yet and it'll do nicely with any other graphics software you might need. Everything I've done in Anim8or in the past five years have been done in Win Vista/7

Any newer computer will play nicely with Anim8or, basically. I'm not too sure but Windows Vista may be iffy on compatibility but has been completely functional for me. Whatever you can afford, invest in the best graphics card, cpu, and memory you can, prioritized in that order. (memory is extremely cheap, you can easily upgrade that later)

Current specs below:

Desktop
Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit
6 GB Ram
Intel i7 940 2.95 Ghz Processor
AMD Radeon HD 6970 Graphics Card

Laptop
Win 7 Premium 64-bit
6 GB Ram
Intel i5 2.3 Ghz Processor
NVidia GeForce GT 540M

[ENSONIQ5]

Totally agree with Raxx, no problems at all on my W7 laptop:

Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit
6GB RAM
Intel i7 2630QM 2.0 GHz processor
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics

The compatibility wizard in W7 fixes 99% of compatibility issues in about 20 seconds, and for anything this can't fix you can also run an XP virtual machine in W7 (free download from Microsoft: www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/ ).  I run old copies of Corel Draw which the W7 compatibility wizard can't handle, but they run absolutely 100% in the VM with minimal hassle.

Note on memory: Win 7 32-bit can only access up to 3GB of RAM, no matter how much is physically installed (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier ).  The main things that will slow Anim8or down are a slow (or busy) CPU and insufficient memory.  My best suggestion is to aim for 6GB+ of RAM, W7 64-bit so you can actually use all this memory, and a Core CPU (i3, i5 or i7).

It should be noted also that Anim8or is not capable of multi-thread rendering, so don't expect miracles, but you can run multiple instances of Anim8or, each rendering different frames.  A quick test with two concurrent Anim8or sessions, both rendering, showed 25% CPU usage, so in theory you might be able to render with 8 threads, just in a kinda manual way.

[3Dgeek11]

My recommendation?

If you want a cheap setup, I'd go with a quad-core Intel Sandy Bridge CPU, (2500k recommended from me) an ATI Radeon 6850 or more (or Nvidia 460 or better. 6870 recommended by me), and 4-8GBs of RAM. (6GBs recommended by me)

Motherboard, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc, are up to you to find.
Just so you know, Sandy Bridge CPUs are Socket LGA 1155 so just look for motherboards that support that.

Also:

Note on memory: Win 7 32-bit can only access up to 3GB of RAM, no matter how much is physically installed (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier ).  The main things that will slow Anim8or down are a slow (or busy) CPU and insufficient memory.  My best suggestion is to aim for 6GB+ of RAM, W7 64-bit so you can actually use all this memory, and a Core CPU (i3, i5 or i7).

It should be noted also that Anim8or is not capable of multi-thread rendering, so don't expect miracles, but you can run multiple instances of Anim8or, each rendering different frames.  A quick test with two concurrent Anim8or sessions, both rendering, showed 25% CPU usage, so in theory you might be able to render with 8 threads, just in a kinda manual way.

I second what he said just so you know it's true.

Good luck!

[Blick Fang]

Hi Gang

Thanks for replying so darn fast.  And thank you for you input.  Long Live Anim8or!        Going to do a little shopping around.