What do you mean by "firefly at the highest quality"? What exactly are your render settings?

Sorry what I meant was I'm using the firefly render tab and the arrow is at the far right side past final quality (ie the highest quality) under render settings. Does that make sense?

You're using the very max of the Auto Settings, in other words?

Yes I just realized that. Should I change to manual and change something? That's why I couldn't find some of the options I remembered like bucket size, etc. lol. Though I'm not sure what setting those should be anyway.

Well you don't need a whole lot of ray trace bounces unless you have reflective things, for one, and pixel samples can be adjusted as well as min. shading rate.
Unless you have a bunch of mirrors and reflection and refraction, you could get away with only 1 raytrace bounce. If you have anything reflective in your scene, you will need more than that, maybe 4 or 6 bounces. And that will need to vary if you have refraction, too.

The bucket size determines how much RAM is allotted to each bucket. Larger bucket sizes seem to render more quickly, but a lower bucket size is better if you don't have a lot of system RAM.

I have 4 gbs of RAM is that considered not a lot? lol. I will have to look at the reflections.

4 GB is enough. Considering you're only running a 32 bit OS with a 32 bit program, you'll never use all that RAM. No more than 2GB, for that matter, unless you have the "3GB Switch" Windows registry hack enabled, in which case you could use up to 3GB of RAM for everything totaled. But Poser itself will never use more than 2 GB.

You can see how much RAM Poser is using in Task Manager. Under the Processes tab it shows "Private Working Set" memory and how much each application is using.

Are you using Indirect Lighting, as well? I find that P8 doesn't require as high a quality settings for as good a render as Poser Pro does, and for that matter, with IDL I'd have a hard time matching render quality no matter what I did in PP.

I can't remember if you said you're using Poser 8 or not. If so, and if you're using the IDL, you'll need more than one raytrace bounce for proper GI. I think, assuming Poser 8 is handling it the way I think it is. I don't have Poser 8, so I'm not real sure. Other programs use settings independent of raytrace bounces for GI, but I think Poser is using the raytrace bounce number to determine it.

So how much should I use for bucket size? And Poser 7 doesn't have indirect lighting right? Don't have that yet:(

For bucket size, start at 32 and watch the RAM usage in Task Manager. Then up it to maybe 64, see what happens. Maybe take it to 128, but that might be pushing it some.
I render with a 128 bucket size in PP, using background render and 64 bit Firefly and it seems somewhat faster that way. Not always though - it depends a lot on scene variables.

You can also select "separate process" in the render settings under the edit settings, to make the render engine use its own RAM, independent of Poser. But that can also increase render time.

No, Poser 7 doesn't have IDL.

That temperatures don't seem too high. Mine are currently somewhat higher that that, 40 and 43°C. Those temperatures are normal for this generation of CPUs, I guess it's the same as the one in computer I'm currently on, Core 2 Duo, conroe generation, mine is E6300, originaly clocked at 1.86 GHz, mine is overclocked to 2.8 GHz.

I'm out of ideas for this problem. I just tried rendering one scene. It has fair amount of props. I used 3 lights. One infinite without shadows or AO, one infinite with ray traced shadows and one IBL light with AO. This is the result

http://img267.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=03052_Render_5_122_439lo.JPG

It took 4-5 minutes to render this.

Does it make a difference that there is no people or anything though? I thought it took a lot to add V4. Do you have a scene with people you rendered to know how much time that adds?

Like I said those temps are when it's not rendering. In a couple days I should have time to sit down and render various stuff and check the temps etc. while it is rendering. I sometimes wonder though if something in the computer is bad maybe/not working properly rather than I don't have enough power. Last night I tried to render an image, was just doing area renders, and small ones at that (I used 640x800) and it was taking forever and even just part of that was taking like 10 minutes so now it seems to be going slower again. This scene had less then the previous in it, though I think one more light. I did notice the temps were some higher but not a lot but I ran out of time so I couldn't keep messing with it. Just right now trying to keep squeezing in time to test things between work so I'll try again later. I had the tower cleaned out of dust didn't seem to make a difference. I'm just getting frustrated because I had bought the new parts to the computer and it never seemed to help and now I'm thinking of upgrading again I just want to make sure that it isn't that something is bad and I end up buying something and still have problems. I do sometimes get MSI errors, could the motherboard cause problems? I wouldn't think so but I don't know.

I added three V4s in that scene, render time was 9-10 minutes, core temperatures were about 50°C (123°F) while this was rendering.

http://img203.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=26870_Render_1_122_474lo.JPG

MSI errors? You mean errors when you try to install something? That's the only MSI that comes to my mind is installer MSI files. Installer errors could mean there is problem with your windows installation. Especially if it's been long time since it was reinstalled last time (if ever). I usually reinstall my OS' at least once a year.

Oops sorry, I meant they were errors for the MSI motherboard (at least I'm assuming it's for the board I don't think anything else I have is MSI). I had tried reinstalling the drivers and the control panel thing, but I sometimes still get errors. I haven't for awhile though so I don't remember exactly what they said. I was just curious if something is wrong with the motherboard if it could cause render problems, considering from what everyone is saying, it seems like even though AO takes a long time to render, it shouldn't take the amount of time it does for me. I just don't want to go buy a processor and find out I still have the same problems. I think I really need to sit while something renders and keep watching the temps and cpu when I have time.