Sorry for another big picture. :)

Anyway, looking at this we can see that lowering the subrays to 8 only has a minor reduction in visual quality (only a few things like the disk on the side of the horses head) which imho can be fixed in photoshop in 30 seconds. :) But for 42mins less time it is well worth doing.

As we can see it is the quality threshold that will make or break your quality and not the subrays. In all honesty, I can't see why anybody would EVER use subrays all that much higher, but never 25. :)

Oh and just to let you know, I am indeed using a 1ghz machine. I don't use openGL mode because I found in the past that it doesn't render quicker and screen refresh is slower. Also those shots are actual render size, not shrunk down. Imagine the render speed of a fancy scene with many objects, volumetric lighting and a reflection or two that is twice as big. :)

I know people have concerns about what to expect from the price you pay, so I am not saying to raise the price, but they shouldn't be expected to have an equal render for so cheap. However, perhaps they need to release a Vue Pro version that has the advanced renderings some are looking for. If it was faster and better, I would seriously consider paying a lot more for that version. :)

YL, yep, definately was ultra mode. Ofcourse shadows were set to 30% as the original test so that is why it looks so bad. :)