LemonSlice on 19 June 2013
I think hardware rendering would entail that GPU is doing the rendering. Software rendering that it's on the CPU.
I don't know much about this, but I think most programs use hardware rendering while you're working with modeling/animation, and software to produce the final output. Though I guess if it used GPGPU functionality to render that would also benefit from a good graphics card. Pro graphics cards are expensive and not a necessity if your brother is not being paid handsomely for his work. All this info could be outdated, though, so take it with a grain of salt.
