my 2ct: my tutorial on managing Poser as a program (CPU, RAM etc) starts here: http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?p=162 so take your pick.

On top of that, I've found that temperature control might pay off when loading the machine for longer render times. I do use Speccy (piriform.com) for that.

Always render as a seperate process indeed. When Firefly crashes, your Poser remains alive. 

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though