Hi Gordon,
something is not ok or need some clarification with your situation.
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When you mean “render” do you mean “loading 3D viewer first time to see the board” or do you mean “refresh rate for update a new view by mouse movement”?
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How long does it take to open an empty board on 3D viewer?
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If it takes 90s to preview a footprint then something is wrong.
It may be some bug on Windows/drivers as it was described latter or
from your description it sounds that you are using extreme complex (I mean over complex for the proposes).
First I suggest to make sure it works with no problem with an empty or with no 3D shape board. You should be able to open on any system with or without GPU drivers very fast ~1s
Then if it is OK let have look on your models. Are you able to share with us?
Are you using STEP files directly? It may be that the models are too complex and are creating huge representations.
I suggest if it is the case that you using StepUp (by @maui) using FreeCAD and explore the export options to WRML and see if you can simplify the model (making the result file smaller)
EDIT: you should do it for the most complex models. You can evaluate the size of the WRML. A WRML file with more than 1MB starts to be complex (special if you use a lot of components).
The hardware specification should not be a problem (but OS and Drivers may be)
I developed 3D Viewer without GPU drivers and it is using OpenGL specification that is compatible with graphic boards older than 10 years.
Do not give up on 3D Viewer as it should be very useful for MCAD visualization!