Fracal software for low spec pcs?

[Yesiamjames]

I've got a 2 year old Advent netbook. 1.6GHZ, 1GB ram, 32mb video card.

I can run mandelbulber and a few other 3D fractal programs but they're pretty slow.

What software would you guys recommend? (2d or 3d)

Any advice would you give for speeding fractal software up without reducing quality too far? (I'm still really new to this).

Thanks in advance

[Madman]

I don't think the type of software makes much of a difference (except that 3D is in general slower then 2D), but the settings you use do. Reduce size or accuracy and you will have your result earlier. And yes, the latter wil have an effect on quality. A good technique may be to start rendering at low quality and size settings and if you think you like what you see, have a high quality render run overnight. If you experience a steep drop in rendering speed at larger sizes, you might want to consider a couple of GB extra memory (if that's possible in a netbook)

The only other thing you need is patience (or enough money to buy a state-of-the-art multicore pC  )

[lenord]

1.6 Ghz is pretty slow, unless it's a multi core processor and 1gig Ram aint much depending on the OS you're running, Vista and Se7en need a Gig just to run efficiently so you must be running XP if it's PC. I run an old IBM 3Ghz P4HT with 3 Gig Ram running XP-Pro/SP3, it's a bit slow compared to true dual cores and snail like compared to a quad but it's what I have. I learned after Burning up 2 HP Dual core Laptops that Laptops and Notebooks are not up to the task of full time Digital Graphics of any type, they just can not take the beating of Render after Render, they can't get enough ventilation for cooling.