still dont follow what you are saying griggs...and no Im not a touchy type so let me know. This could help others if there is indeed something I did not take into account. I did 5 things during the test: .I opened a bryce4 scene and rendered it ..I saved the bryce4 scene as a bryce 5 scene and rendered it (was indeed faster than the straight 4 scene) ...I did optimization of both b4 and b5 to get the lowest possible times (2 steps) ... also just rendered both straight with normal settings in b4 and b5...and b4 was faster with the same settings (either optimized or not) additional..which is not included in my test...I created a set of objects in b4 and b5(a cube, sphere, and cylinder) placed them in the same position in both 4 and 5) textured them and timed the render... this of course is a fast render, but the difference held up there too. what did I not do that I should have? thanx BT