The bottom line for all of this might just be if you want more state of the art rendering ability, that you'll need to upgrade. That's no different then all the new games that come out every year, or many 3d applications. Yeah, they'll work with less, but they are designed to push tech to it's limits. And I'd much rather have the option to have lots of bells and whistles and the ability to upgrade to them easily, then not have them at all. I've read many MANY times of people using Lightwave, Max, Maya and Vue running 2-4 Gig or ram. And when you really push hard with large photoshop images, lots of ram is a must have. I've only got 1 gig here, and I've been trying to decide if it's ime to upgrade my system (2.5 yrs old), or if more ram will be enough to keep me happy with it another year.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.