OK, so I upgraded my PC last night... New Power Supply, Video Card, and 16GB RAM & just had to try it out :) Being new to IDL, I've been tinkering non stop, trying to find a range of settings and method for every-render use. Honestly, I don't think they even make a computer that could handle maximum settings, lol. Even after my upgrade I have to be careful not to get too crazy. it seems that the best way to start is at the minimum in every category and move each up slowly after every render until you have acceptable quality and render time. another thing to keep in mind is scene content, every scene has more or less items, colors, placement proximity, so what might work on one scene does not work on another. starting at the bottom values in manual render settings is a safe place to start. After a couple weeks of use I came at the problem of running out of memory, and crazy long render times.... using the above concept. This simple scene rendered in 8 min. at 1655 x 963 72dpi. after that I changed some materials and hit render getting the same result, with tons of memory to spare... looks pretty nice I think. this scene used IDL and just for kicks...a single point light for the sun with raytraced shadows. I just used the normal render settings panel, D3D script was too complicated to find a safe approach. I also added some complications by trying to use all the memory hungry functions like IDL, 3D motion blur, displacement, and lots of reflections in the same scene. In the end I found a nice balance and the approach I'll use going forward.