well pj the dismissal, was not of the speed...it was the "this was planned" things that people were kicking around. Actually, this is very reminiscent (sp) of when Corel messed with the volumetric materials. (rem that?) That little excapade actually cost lots of folks 20x render time increases on the same scene. This is, from the best that I can understand, the way that Bryce is behaving in that it thinks it is a "background" program...not the primary one that should be getting some more cpu. Win 95 used to let you set priorities for programs...I still have to see in later versions let you do that. I do have to take back the "the same settings in b4 have no real difference" thing, because setting my computer the same and running either b4 gives me ~ 1 minute faster render per hour on b4. Not a lot but 1.x percent does count, that is a bit faster....but the difference for b5 is closer to 4-5% faster per hour...at least on this machine. If you'd be interested in helping me confirm or deny the setup requirements to get the "approximate same speed" as b4, just email me...and I'll tell you what I did and then you can test it to see if it gives you the same...or similar as what Im getting now. I have it to about 3% difference..same quality of render, same size. But it IS silly to have to do this kind of setup for the same result as b4 gave by default. BT