General: Upgrade My CPU

I just nearly peed myself at the visual quality of 3DS Max.

Look at this! It could be a photo, and this is a "low quality" image! Crap.

That's awesome...but I'm useless at overclocking.

I suppose I could just nudge it up a bit though.

I know I should look around btw...I have....but I just don't know whether I should stick to dual cores or whether quads would really be worth it...

If the main aim is to speed up ray tracing, then you will regularly utilise all 4 cores! What I'd like to know is if 3DS Max takes full advantage of your GPU. I imagine it does, and if it does, then a faster GPU will make much, much more difference than a faster CPU. Probably...

Do you have any spare PC's lying around? I think 3DS Max can use the spare CPU cycles on other PC's to speed up rendering, IIRC. You might find that what you need is already in the house.

My advice would be to buy a really good CPU cooler for about £20. That way, whether you overclock or upgrade, it's still gonna get used. I'd try the overclock route first though, and find out about the clustered/distributed rendering (look up "backburner", since you might find you can get all of the speed you need for nothing. You might even be able to get a few Athlon or P4 based PC's on freecycle and build yourself a little supercomputer in a cupboard for nought.

I've got my old shuttle athlon 64 3000 kicking about here at my Mums.
It has a fairly decent 9800se gpu.
Hmm. 3DS Max astounds me, that picture looks incredible. I don't think I'd mind overnight rendering, but I do think I need to speed things up a bit.
Think I'm gonna stick with dual core....I can get a much faster Dual Core for just £90. I need a new hard drive too.

Excuse my typing, I'm using the worst keyboard ever. The DEL key is at the bottom, the shift key is the size of a letter key and the return key is only a bit bigger, and the arrow keys have been bunched up too. Urgh, it's infuriating, I keep hitting the wrong keys.

It's a bit like this:

Oh god, it's horrible.
/rant

My project is to create a fully 3D Virtual Shop, complete with products, and integrate it into a webpage.
Going to be using VRML too.

Looks quite daunting, but it excites me too. I'd feel really proud if I was able to do that - you could create some really impressive stuff and vrml/3ds max has a wide range of applications and areas you can use it for.