thefixer, I think your settings could use some adjustment. In my trials, I have found that the best bucket size is by 4's. I haven't gone as low as 16 (that may be too small.) The lowest I have done is 32, but I have found that 64 is the best for me. Keep in mind, the higher this number, the more that can be processed at the same time. My suggestion would be to only use less than 64 if you are very low on RAM, or you need to frequently stop renders (in which case, you may want to use the Area Render feature.) On the texture subject, per EF, you should not use a texture size greater than the resolution of the scene. Using larger textures does not improve the final render after the resolution of the scene has been passed. You have a lot going on in your scene, including the lights, especially if you are using any extras like raytraced shadows, AO, etc. For a good idea of what your scene is trying to render, try the attached script. You need to change the file extension to .py You can also use the settings (see the instructions in the top header) to split your renders into shadow only, and color only, so you can composite the images later. This uses less total resources for each render (at the expense of longer total time to render the two, and compositing them, but hey, it's something.) Hope this helps!