HELP! Graphic card advise with ALIENWARE

[initiative]

Hi everbody,

well, I need some help out here
recently I bought 2 Alienwares for work, they are 4GB RAM and Nvidia 512 but my problem is that I don't actully feel like a monster machine (for it's price and characteristics), when I'm using max it doesn't make any diference between my computer at home (a normal one lol), for an nvydia 512 graphic card, it doesn't speed up my renders or max interface.

My questions are:

HOw do I know I'm using all my graphic card and RAM capacity for my 3d application?

Are some configuration I may have to do for a correct function my alienwares?

NOTE: I'm using Openg GL for max

initiative

[DeadlyFreeze]

GPU's dont do anything when you actually 'render' your scene. They only deal with what you visually see in you viewport.

[Animalator]

Yeah for some reason alienware computers are about 500-1000$ more then other computers. I was going to buy one, but went through BOXX instead. To fully take advantage of your graphics card and 4 gigs of ram depends on your scene. Your graphics card will take advantage of all "real time" graphics in your viewport, like what DeadlyFreeze said, and your ram and processor will take advantage of what you render out. The larger the scene with textures, animation, lighting, etc will take up more ram when you render.

When you are working in your scene and when you render hit ctrl-alt-del and take a look at your performance tab. There you will be able to see how your system resources are being used.

[initiative]

Thanks for the comments

Do I have to do any kid of configuration inside o outside Max for a better performace?

What´s does OPEN GL or DIRECT X or SOFTWARE means for video configuration, it always ask me for that

[andoy]

Woooow you buy two Alienware pc's and you don't know what is open GL or Direct X ??
I wish i had a boss like you, lol...

ok what Nvidia 512 are they ??? Nvidia have a few cards that are 512 and some are better than others, so that needs to be known before we can comment..
either way they won't speed up your renders, so it would be nice to know what sort of work you are using these machines for.... then we can comment better on their configuration for you and help you out a bit.
are your scenes in Max very high poly, very complicated, using a lot of particle effects, animated etc etc... this all should be explained here so we know how best to advise you..

[USED]

another tip:

if you have 4 gigs of ram in your computer and you running windows XP you will need to apply the 3gb switch inorder to take advantage of more than 1.5 gigs of ram (xp has a 1.5 gb limitation of TOTAL mem that one application can use. This also included the page file usage.) Once you apply the switch to the windows start up you will then be able to use , 3gb per app. I use this at work, and let me tell you if makes all the diffrence in the world when it comes to massive renders or view port viewing

however if your not maxing your system out and, or getting memory erros with renders like mental ray, etc. you will not see much of a diffrence...