so, i’ve been doing this for 5 hours just cause my computer’s too bad for running blender and i had to wait after every move i did 
so i couldn’t make much changes about what was in my head and it came out like that.
Cool looking scene! Nice pink trees 
Reflection on the water is cool. Have fun dude!!
It is hard when the hardware struggles. You have still made a fine scene though.
I see that there is a trend here with your work- The hardware. It is likely you will need to keep everything you do as low poly as possible until you manage to get better hardware. I would highly suggest getting a desktop if your living space and life allows for it. These are so much cheaper than a “souped” up laptop- whose big price tag is only for convenience and little else.
I would suggest looking around locally for Kijiji or Facebook sales if possible, or stores that sell refurbished online or in store. Do your research and aim at, at least in my opinion, mid-grade gaming computers. Leave yourself the option of being able to upgrade it by buying something that has a good sized tower- nothing compact.
After doing much research I bought a refurbished one for about 800 dollars and then upgraded it a bit. I unpack the experience and wrote a ballade to enshrine warning and verse about the whole procedure. The topic is called: Ballad of the Dell..
If you want to go the route I took, do your research and take your time without deciding right away. It is best to feel comfortable with your purchase than gambling- especially if you don’t have much money. Make sure that the tower is customizable, and don’t buy Del if you want to get ahold of generic hardware. Their motherboards will not accept anything but dell PCU’s (power sources) unless you manage to find an adapter (which BestBuy did for me, but Ebay has some.). If you tinker, they purposely built it so that it will fry the motherboard (which did not happen to me because I did my research.)
Until then, patience and low-poly will be your best friends 
actually yeah my computer is really old and not good at running these programs but there’s also another thing. when i first started using blender, it was a bit different from now. then when i switched to win 11, something was not right about my graphics card and even after i switched back to win 10 and redownloaded the software of the card, it’s still not the same. for example when i do something with colors or textures, blender always stops working but it wasn’t like that. idk what’s the reason or how to solve it. maybe i should but a new graphics card or something but i just wanna ask you if you know something about it.
I don’t know to much about that. But it could be that when you switched over, windows 11 probably changed a few programs and drivers dealing with your hardware. Which means the change may be permanent unless perhaps you find a way to restore it to its factory build, and then run windows 10. If you save all your files you could do a complete computer wipe and start all over again.
This is something useful to do from time to time anyway because our computers get bogged down with lots of things, including “updates” and the mess they leave behind.
Nice thing about an old computer, if you buy a new old computer, it won’t be expensive, but it will be better. If your old computer still runs, you can use it to help render out animations in conjunction with your new old computer 
I don’t know if this is going to be helpful or not, but I suspect you’d have a much easier time if you dumped Windows and switched to a Linux distro like Ubuntu or Pop!OS. This may not solve your issue, but it might be worth a try.
The reason I say this is because Windows is notorious for loading up a computer with bloatware and all of these ‘scare tactic’ security softwares that eat up your memory and urge you to ‘buy the subscription’ after your free trial runs out.
Case in point: I recently got an old Windows 7 laptop from my mom. I only wanted to use it so I could run an emu8086 emulator to learn assembly language. This laptop is probably about 10 - 15 years old and it was PAINFULLY slow, only 4 Gb of RAM. It took MINUTES to start up and to even shut down.
I went through the software uninstall page and got rid of all the bloatware from AVG, McAffee, Panda security, Garmin, Norton, etc…
Then I went into the registry to clean that out (which I DO NOT recommend unless you know exactly what you’re doing, or unless you’re okay with rocking your system and reinstalling the OS).
Now the same Windows 7 laptop boots up in about 30 seconds because there are not a bunch of resources running in the background.
I don’t recommend this approach for everyone, but if you’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’re doing and if you’re okay with taking a few risks, this might help speed up your computer somewhat.
I started using Linux over a decade ago and you’d literally have to pay me to use a Windows computer for anything serious anymore. I won’t touch Windows unless it’s provided by an employer, with the exception of running that emu8086 software for the purpose of learning assembly language, as previously mentioned. There is an option to run WINE, but I don’t really like messing with WINE.
Switching to Linux isn’t always easy, as the hardware profiles don’t always match up with the drivers, but I’ve almost always been able to find answers in Linux forums, where-as I’ve NEVER been able to solve a Microsoft problem using any information provided by Microsoft. Not once.
These ideas may or may not be right for you, but I would definitely recommend examining the bloatware on your computer more closely and have a serious think about whether or not you really need each piece of software.
I hope this is helpful.
I’m not sure if I agree with this statement, but hear me out…
When the computer is turned on, a chip on the motherboard gets electricity and begins executing a very small piece of software that runs in a 16 bit architecture. This essentially starts the BIOS software, which is very limited in what it can do. This software is lives in a chip on the motherboard, and it has nothing to do with the HDD or the OS.
This is assembly level where the emphasis is directing electrons through the components on the board. That’s all it cares about: electrons flowing to the correct components on the board…1’s and 0’s. On and off…Logic gates. That’s pretty much it at assembly level.
This is also why the BIOS always looks like it’s from 1968, despite the computer having a great graphics card.
The BIOS then starts the kernel, which can begin to draw a few additional resources to speed things up.
The kernel then starts the OS running, which is where we get into the full firepower of what the computer is capable of.
This is why you hear things like ‘Linux Ubuntu’, ‘Linux Mint’, ‘Puppy Linux’ etc…Linux is actually the kernel that the various distros are built upon, but ‘Linux’ is not the actual operating system. Most of the time it’s just a detail when speaking, but at assembly level, it’s an important detail.
So, in this scenario, installing Windows 11, then going back to install a different version will completely over-write the HDD , but it won’t affect the BIOS. The kernel should be over-written with the different installation, as in, if I replace Windows with Linux, then the Windows kernel would be lost and completely replaced with the Linux kernel.
This would not, however, affect the BIOS, which lives in a chip on the motherboard. The BIOS remains the same as it was written to the chip at the factory.
The same should happen when wiping Win11 and replacing it with Win10.
This is just to say that there are multiple stages for booting up a computer, and every stage has a specific function and it’s limitations.
I hope this helps.
I cannot argue there- short uneducated speculations elicit necessarily long, but true answers. Likely you know what you are talking about.
So to see if I understand what you said:
At its core, the Graphics card is what it should be- everything else is simply overhead- an addition to the core. So Windows 11 is imposed on top, but if uninstalled, it will be lost and replaced by what is installed: such as windows 10.
Earlier you also talk about Window’s bloat- which I agree could be the case.
Makes me want to consider switching to Linux. My father keeps a window’s 7 around, but he also knows how to break windows 10 in, getting rid of all sorts of undesirable things. But sounds like a tough process.
Did you notice any render improvements switching over to Linux?
Interesting. I was wondering if you know of any good resources that I could read through that would assist me in removing “bloatware.” My knowledge of computers is quite basic, but I do know windows has numerous background software that I don’t need. I have noticed my computer takes 3 - 4 minutes from start up to being able to use the web browser. My computer is not the best, but I do know it has more power than a laptop, yet I have a laptop that starts faster. Also thanks for the information you have provided here. I am always interested in trying to get my budget computer to run more efficiently for the sake of blender.
Great scene. I love the effects of the polygonal cuts in the background colors. It provides a cubism approach to further sell the low-poly style. This looks like it was fun to make which now makes me want to create one of my own.
I’ll try to address both @Zangk and @3DE_Study in the same response.
First off, I’m no expert. I started taking a Udemy class on assembly language and mullti-threaded kernel development a few weeks ago and I’ve learned a few things that I didn’t know before, but I’m no expert.
I’m not trying to contradict anyone or ‘be right for the sake of being right’, per se, but it’s more to say that I once thought similar ideas and I’ve learned that things are not what I expected.
Ummm…I barely used Blender back when I had the old Windows install. The GameDev classes were not around back then (to my knowledge) and learning Blender was really hard for me before I found GameDev so I didn’t do much with it back then. Ergo, I cannot speak about performance differences between Windows and Linux.
As @Zangk suggested, the Windows 11 installation does indeed live on the HDD, where-as the BIOS lives on a chip on the motherboard. Ergo: A clean installation of any OS - if done properly - would overwrite the previous.
More accurately, consider formatting a flash drive. There’s usually a quick method and a long method. The quick method will basically create a clean partition, but whatever doesn’t officially get overwritten is still there. This is how data recovery can be achieved. A long format will rewrite the entire drive with zeroes thereby erasing everything. This is why the long format takes much longer. Both methods essentially do the same thing, but the quick method can still have this ‘shadow’ information if those things haven’t been overwritten yet.
The same would apply to an HDD holding a copy of an OS. The partitions get rewritten, but until the HDD is so full of new information that it reaches critical mass (for lack of a better term) then data recovery can still be achieved even after a new OS is installed over the old one.
The graphics card is assembly level and only really cares about 1’s and 0’s - logic gates, etc…The OS and drivers reach the hardware at the assembly language level.
So dumping Win11 and replacing with Win10 would overwrite the HDD with new partitions, but there could be traces of Win11 on the HDD. They would be inaccessible unless using a specific recovery program to reach them. They would not be accessible by the Win10 OS. Win10 wouldn’t even see it. I hope that makes sense.
Linux Distros are often open-source and don’t usually cost anything. If you have a spare old box to play with, I recommend trying a distro like Ubuntu or Pop!OS. Both websites have specific instructions for making a bootable flash drive and installing the software. I DO NOT recommend experimenting with your main computer unless you are just at your wits end.
A big problem I used to have with Ubuntu was the WiFi drivers on my old netbook. I had to spend a few days in the forums looking for a fix, but I eventually found someone who had solved the same issue with a similar hardware profile. Also, I had to use CAT5 wired connection to my router in order to download the necessary things to make the WiFi work. This could be the type of problem you’d encounter in doing this. There may be other different issues, too.
These days I use a computer made by System76, and they built Pop!OS - based on Ubuntu - to match their specific hardware profile.
Ubuntu instructions:
Pop!OS instructions:
I’m going to make another post to reference @3DE_Study’s questions. BRB
Okay, this part can be dangerous and is not to be taken lightly. I don’t have any resources I can refer you to. I learned this from other people I used to work with and from experimenting.
I DO NOT recommend doing this unless you have a good recovery disk because it’s easy to delete something that Windows needs, and you can really screw your system up by doing this if you’re not careful.
That said, here we go…
First, go into the Control Panel and find the ‘Uninstall Programs’ page. In here you can find listings of all the software that has been installed. You should be able to click on each one and run an uninstall wizard to get those things removed.
WRITE DOWN all of the things that you uninstall for the next step. You can’t really break anything in here because Windows will likely just reinstall something upon the next reboot or update if it needs whatever you uninstalled.
Now this is the dangerous part…open the command prompt and type in: regedit
Regedit is the command to open the Windows registry. This is the danger zone. If you delete the wrong thing in here, you’ll definitely screw your computer up. You can expand all the tabs and look around for a while to get a feel for the registry environment. Take a look around and check out the file system…just get a feel for how things are laid out.
Use CTRL+F to search…let’s say you uninstalled AVG from the Uninstall page. CTRL+F searching for AVG (Norton, Panda, McAffee, Garmin, etc…) will show you that yes, while you did indeed uninstall the program, there are still traces in the registry. This is why you can delete something and it will mysteriously come back later. It’s still in the registry.
These are the files you need to delete.
Once again, DO NOT do this unless you have a good recovery disk. Try to practice with an old computer to get a feel for it before experimenting on your main ride. You can really mess things up in the registry and you’ll be SOL if you don’t have a recovery disk.
I hope this is helpful.
Thanks for the info. I actually do have an old laptop that I don’t use and could test this on. I did know that simply uninstalling stuff wouldn’t help because I did see at a later time that they just came back like you said. When it came to the registry, that was when I stopped. As I read your comment, I started to remember that I did look this up years ago, but stopped when it came to the registry. At that time, I did not have a spare computer to test this on. Thanks for again for the information.
It’s not a tough process, but it can be time consuming. It definitely takes some experimentation. You’ve got to be willing to risk it, which is why it’s never recommended to do these things on your main computer if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
Here’s another fun fact: Windows and Mac are very good about protecting their installations. They have a lot of safeties included that will keep people from rocking their systems by doing stupid things.
Linux installations, by contrast, will allow you to do whatever you want.
I got this screen grab from…I don’t Reddit at all, but I think I found this while surfing:
The joke here is that ‘sudo’ is a keyword that allows access to super user privileges. ‘rm -rf’ is a terminal command that will recursively remove all of the contents of a directory (aka a folder), then delete the directory. The ‘/’ denotes a directory (like /folder1) and the ‘*’ is a wildcard that means ‘anything’.
Have a think about what would happen when you run this command. Yes, Linux will allow it.
Windows and Mac are protected against this type of action.
Let us know how it turns out!
