Up your bucket size to at least 70-- lots of people use more, but I'm a weenie. My renders speeded up with higher buckets and still looked quite good. Slow Firefly is not news. Especially with V3 involved. You got three figures in a V3 render? I've never been able to do that. Freezing Firefly is not news. Though it usually freezes pre-render, it's not unheard of to choke at hair or some other figure it's vexed at. Usually runs 100% processor at this point. I dont have Sp3, cause SP2 took care of most of the problems bothering me the most. Emily