I ask as with 384megs I ran out when it got to rendering second light (I know 384megs isn't that much) TIA

That's like asking how much five cars weigh. You could render 100 squares or only one, it depends on textures and other things being used. If you use really large textures and have some large shadow maps on your lights, you can use up twice that easily on just one figure. I'd consider knocking down textures or decreasing the shadow on your lights. Either should help a little.

StarGate... This is more likley to be drive related than to do with your physical RAM... You could probably do with checking your swap-file settings (y'know... virtual memory...) set it to a nice proportion of your drive. If you're running a bit low on drive-space you might need to defrag and possibly remove some chaff... h:)

wish there was a way of editing your posts without deleting them. If you can afford it get as much memory as your motherboard can handle, but like hogwarden says swap-file is always going to be a problem especially with older less memory efficient OS. Rob

If you are rendering five DAZ characters all with hi-rez textures and fancy hair, I would believe that 384 Mb is on the low end. If some of the objects are more light-weight than that, it should be OK with that amount of memory.