Thanks for the advice! Yeah, His stuff is heavy on the texture side.  I'm going to try both of those suggestions.in a re-render. funny though, C7 pro seems to use slightly less memory than DS3 to begin with, but (as I'd expect) pretty much 100% of the cpu as it  gets into a render.
I do have the c8 beta, but without a 64 bit OS i'll have the exact same issues. I'm hoping to have enough of a system upgrade soon to keep me busy for awhile.