Hello,
I have experienced this strange behaviour in Poser Pro (searched the forum for similar threads but found none):
I have a Core Duo 2, GTS8800, 4Gb and Poser Pro (set to use max number of threads) I was rendering a very large scene with IBL lights (rendering with a seprate process)
I opened the task manager and noticed that Poser Pro "idled" at 10-20% CPU usage for a long time, sometimes peaking up to 70-80% briefly, then back to 10-20%.
There is nothing else running save for Poser.
Both cores are working, but it's the overall load on the system that is low...

Is there some setting I am overlooking?
I thought I had learned everything I need from the replies to this old post of mine
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3255716&ebot_calc_page#message_3255716
...but I was wrong!

Thanks for help!

maybe the bottleneck is not memory, but CPU. I have a Q6000 quad and when rendering Poser Pro pegs out all four cores, but does not max out memory (i have 4gig)

I mean it seems like Poser Pro is on vacation: it has the whole system available and only using 10-20%

Poser 7 only divides the work of a render once, at the start of the render.  I don't know for sure but I believe Poser Pro is no different.  When you have the renderer set for two threads, and you have two cores, then the job is split into two tasks that each run in their own thread; when one completes, your processor will be 50% idle.  The remaining work is not divided again, unfortunately.  In your case since you have it set to max number of threads, it makes me think there is some single-threaded task that is taking a long time.  I don't know how rendering in a separate process will affect this, you might try disabling that.

Excuse me if I insist, but the screen capture occurred very early in the render
(it was rendering the top left of the image)...
...what I read on the image I posted is that
neither core was really working.

I didn't have 50% CPU load, I really had both cores at 10-20% of total.
They were both loaded but with a very small load.

Quote - Poser 7 only divides the work of a render once, at the start of the render.  I don't know for sure but I believe Poser Pro is no different.  When you have the renderer set for two threads, and you have two cores, then the job is split into two tasks that each run in their own thread; when one completes, your processor will be 50% idle.  The remaining work is not divided again, unfortunately. 

Regardless of anything else, I am confirming this in PoserPro. This is especially bad if you have hair. Ineveitably one process gets all the hair and the other three finish WAY ahead and are too stupid to go get another bucket to chew on. Phatthhhhooooooooy.

I have not had the problem cited above. On my Quad, once the actual render begins, all four are pegged out at 25% each as long as they are not "through with their assignment."

::::: Opera :::::

Wow, interesting. We should all be aware that there can be wierdness that makes the render threading really crippled.

When I am done tweaking and heading to bed, before I trigger the final render (the one with settings cranked) I usually exit and restart PP. Reboot is probably a good idea too.

:: og ::

If this keeps going on maybe you should get some assist from Smith Micro tech support?

Yes, I should...
...but the last time I had an issue with Runtime folder whose name had an exclamation mark at the beginning

(see one of my last posts here at Rend
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3278159)

the Smith Micro support was really Micro...
they even complained because I was "one of those users that is working with Non-SM content"
and so I must have had "dozen of runtimes" (I suppose any Poser user does...)
...I solved the problem only thanks to Rend Forum.

LOL. They must have remotely detected the presence of Victoria! That hussy is to blame for everything.

::::: Opera :::::

Yeah, so I closed my support ticket with a lot appreciation and dropped my question here: that's how I solved the issue
Now You cannot find a single exclamation marks anywhere in my HD
;-)

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the sizes of your Page Files in the two screenshots. When the CPU was running slow the PF is almost a Gig larger than when running normally.
 Something was clogging up the system.

It's completely normal for the page file contents to expand during operation.

Yes I know the file expands as you add to the scene and expands further when rendering but when rendering the same scene twice there should not be such a huge difference.