Okay, Jim... just to satisfy all questions: I restored all the default settings on the Mac, and ran the test again under five different Render setups (while running Safari to park all this commentary somewhere as it unfolded) Best time is set in bold type : Bucket Size = 512: 3 minutes 23 sec (203 sec.) Bucket Size = 256: 3 minutes 2 seconds (182 sec.) Bucket Size = 128: 3 minutes 37 sec. (217 sec.) Bucket Size = 64 : 4 minutes 28 sec ( 278 sec.) Bucket Size = 32 (default): 5 minutes 14 seconds. (314 sec.) It appears that there are diminishing returns once you bump it up past a certain point, and at the 512 size, I began to see the ol' Spinning Beachball of Busyness. Dunno what 1024 would've gotten me. If I get more RAM like I plan to, I may have to find out :) Mind, the higher-speed G5's might see small increases in render speeds - the bus speed jumps up from 900MHz (me @ 1.8GHz CPU) to 1GHz (the dual 2GHz CPUs) and 1.25GHz (the 2.5GHz beauties), but we're all stuck with the same SATA hard drive speeds, so there are limiting factors at play no matter what G5 box you get. HTH a little, /P