Maybe for your board he wouldn't recommend it, but a faster cpu will speed up renders, time to buy a quad core Richard! I my self kill unnecessary processes sucking up precious resources.

How many computers do you have Richard? If you have more than one you can use Bryce Lightning 2.1, which is a network rendering tool. scroll down about half way. WWW Link

For games, the graphics card is the part that handles the rendering. Upgrading the graphics card should help.

Is there a way to find out if you get a better processor if would be compatible with everything else? I don't know a whole lot about them but when they say motherboard is that just the cpu or are there other things on there also? With Vue there's module called HyperVue which allows you to render on up to 5 extra computers cutting render time way down. Have an extra laptop so I might check that out. Have a duo/core processor now, but I would really like a Quad, anyway thanks..

So would i!

I looked up motherboards and see that pretty much everything is on it, duh....

You need to get the CPU that has the same socket type as the motherboard.

The motherboard is that big board that connects to everything.

For rendering u need better graphics card & memory. For Vue i think dual processor is enough and so should be your mo/bo. You will get better answer at the site of your rendering software.

I recommend you to buy a Quad CPU. I upgraded from a Core 2 Duo to a Quad core CPU 4 months ago and I'm very happy with the render times. I use Cinema4D and VUE, now I render things in half of the time.
Check the specifications of your Motherboard if supports Quad CPU.

Richard, with Vue particularly there are several things you can do to dramatically reduce the render times. First, make sure that the option to release open GL before render is checked on the lower right hand side of the render settings dialog box. Second, check the render setting of your atmospheres in the atmosphere editor. The are several categories such as Fog, and sun light where you have the option to reduce the quality settings and this makes a big difference without loosing quality of the render. Third, be aware the items such as water that have a high degree of reflection will always take longer and you can compensate by the settings for anti-aliasing for both textures and objects. In the render option box make sure you don't have option such as trace reflections, etc checked unless you really need them as well as items such as motion blur etc unless again you really need them. Finally most renders unless for use in print later will be fine with the Superior setting rather than the Ultra. Once you are familiar with the various options in the render box, through plain old experimentation, you will come up with custom settings of your own for different types of scenes.

There are other things as well but this should give you a good start on better render times without the expense of hardware adjustments as well. You did not mention the RAM load you are applying but I recommend no less than 2GB and with 4GB you will be just fine and RAM is relatively cheap these days.

I also bought HyperVue which basically creates a small render farm for Vue.  I have it installed on a few PC's and it makes a big difference in rendering for me.  It also happens to be on sale for 50% off!

Link

Does moving to a 64 bit platform help in Vue?
I was thinking about installing the 64 bit edition of Vista Ultimate on my next reload and I know that 3Ds Max has a 64 bit edition but I'm not sure if Vue does.

Edit: I found out that Vue 6 Infinite & Vue 6 xStream does have a 64 bit edition. Has anyone tried it and have you noticed a speed increase in rendering to make it worth a reinstall?

Ken...thanks for the tips.

The thing with 64 bit 3D CG apps is the extra memory: not stuck with the 32 bit address space. Your CPU and renderfarm (if any) is what determines render speed at any given frame complexity.

If you want to use Vue with 3DS Max, you will need xStream, which can be run in standalone mode (Infinite).

I tried hypervue but It never worked so I got them to return my money even though somewhere it says no reuturns on module licenses. Have 4 gb's of ram.. Ken I'll try some of those settings, thanks everyone..

I'm getting a new computer with Quad processor XPS 420 8gb's memory max.. You can only use all memory on 64b bit system since 32 bit only allows for 4 gb's max. Didn't know when I ordered.. What's your guys input on 64 bit over 32 bit?