"I thought we decreased bucket size for speed?..or is that just for a more receptive response when cancelling a render?" Increase for speed, decrease for stability. The larger the bucket size, the more info is contained in each render "area", so it requires more resources. Smaller bucket size is easier on resources, but takes longer because there's less information in each render area. For people having problems with renders not finishing or stalling out, sometimes decreasing bucket size can help solve that.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.