Cool, no worries Zefiris.

That's weird that we had to use different tools to get the same result. As long as the result's the same, then who cares i guess.

On a side note (EDIT: that turned out rather long )
Just today, I picked up a _really_ cheap video card, as in $51 australian - at Dick Smith of all places!

It's a Legend Radeon 9550, so it's got an ATI gpu. Sure it's by no means a firegl7350, but I just bought it to get something a bit faster than the onboard intel 865 stuff I had.

Turns out it's really quite a lot faster just for 2d stuff and modelling, I can turn on hardware shading in the viewport and get 10 or more fps with near identical quality to what I can generate a single frame in 2 seconds using Software Render.

It'll also do particles too. :bandit:

As for render times, tried on a scene I've got here and how does 13 seconds vs 2 mins and 26 seconds sound?

Though Hardware Render doesn't like subds too much - they just don't appear!(they do in the viewport, but not the render) Nor do shadows look too spectacular, nor is there any glow where there is with a software render. But still, it's helped more than I thought it would with modelling already and for the price, I reckon it's not too bad.

Thanks gster123 for the soft bodies tip. It's sure going to look a whole lot better than my crappy attempts with software particles thus far. Nice one.

Simon.

edit: thanx for the kind comments one and all.