"wdupre: You don't find it insane that render times were 31 minutes vs 17 seconds?" yes I do find that insane but it's a problem on your system not with the renderer. here is a quick vicky test with similar hair and my most render intense tex breath-gen gaia and with more lights and it took less the a minute production on my new comp(p4 2.53) and just about two on my old computer (AMD 800) by the way I included the two seconds it takes to set the trans falloff to zero on the hair.