Alrighty then! So, my new computer went pretty much WAY over budget but it was worth every penny I spent - multi-format DVD burner for $80 didn't hurt either. But even with 512 MB of PC2700 RAM, it still renders slowly. Not as fast as I'd hoped it would be. I am using an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton Core CPU... could that be the culprit? Would rendering with Mental Ray make things render slower? How do you guys optimize your computers to run Maya? I still need to get a 2nd hard drive to run just Maya - I love gaming as well and it may be affecting my using Maya as well. Any takers of this queston? TIA!

Russell