I've just installed the Poser 7 SP2 in an effort to fix a problem of artifacts appearing in renders. But it's made no difference (shot in the dark, anyway). I have a dual-core Athlon pc so in P7 I set the Render Threads to 2. I definitely see an increase in render speed as a result, which is why I prefer this configuration. However, render artifacts often appear. And after tweaking every possible setting to get rid of these artifacts, including experimenting with every option in Render Settings, lighting, and even tweaking the meshes in the scene itself, with no success, I have come to this conclusion: the artifacts are a direct result of a conflict between certain dual-core configurations, and the Firefly render engine. Why do I say that? Because only when I set Render Threads to 1 do they seem to go away. And if I set it to 3 or 4 threads, it seems to INCREASE the amount of artifacts. I have found nothing else gets rid of artifacts other than reducing the Render Threads to 1. However,  even setting it to 1 still produces artifacts occasionally. It's so bloody random!

In addition, I've found some things do not seem to affect whether artifacts will appear or not: 1)the size and complexity of the scene; 2)if the scene consists of just  one type of poly, or a combination of one-sided, double-sided polys; tris or quads; 3)the use of Ambient Occlusion, and IBLs, HRDIs; 4)the position of the camera ; 5)the number and type of lights...

Anyone else corroborate my findings? Is this an old P7 problem? Or is there a tweak, workaround, I've missed? I'd really prefer to use 2 render threads and this is so bloody annoying. :/