Yeah, I thought about that and tried it. Didn't make any difference. I did notice that performance monitor is showing a lot (around 10%) of kernel activity while rendering this particular file. That's WAAAAY up from what I normally see. Also, do you have any idea why performance monitor shows 4 CPUs on my dual-processor system? I think it has to do with the Hyperthreading, but I'm not certain. Also, I just snagged RenderCorp's Netscale Unlimited product and can't WAIT to get Maya installed on my 4 and 6 CPU HP Netservers (4 and 6GB RAM, respectively) and get some SERIOUS rendering done! :bgreen: :bgreen: :bgreen: