I think each point drop (1.00) on the shading rate means your pc has to calculate 100 micropixels. This is where the real damage is. Hair (and eyelashes) suffers the most here when shading rate is high. Poser's scale is about 1/100th the scale of most apps, too. Textures are usually too big for poser to read, hence lowering the shading rate to get more accurate reads.... and the vicious cycle begins. Or,,, Cut the huge hair textures in half along with the tR maps. Leave shading rate at 1.00 or higher. Get clear results. In half the time. Stewer trick. Another time gain is lowering the shadowmap. A map of 3072 I consider huge and reserved for "final only" renders. I've clocked 7 hours for a 3072 spot to render its shadowmap. A map of over 8000 I think, is way more than you need for these tests. Effects are nice, though. No question. face_off's lightsettings are designed to get RayTrace/like shadows in clarity and shadowmap/like quality in shadow blur and glow or leaked light reduction(ears, nostril, lacs, mouth). I remember his settings as; 3072map, 0.01bias, 10-12 blur along with a few tinted rimlights. The results are really good but, that bias setting is a killer...but neccessary. As far as bucket size, I let P6 decide when it needs to split. I'm always down to 32 before I know it. It really is effective to raise it if you have a "light" scene. On RayTrace bounces... Try to have RayTrace checked but have bounces on 0. This allows AO to function without a wait. Bounces are strickly Reflect/Refract (Imo) so unless you have reflect attached to eyewhites/corneas, you can save some time there, too. And don't forget the body...make invisible whatever is not in the viewer. Big savings in memory.