i have been trying to render a pic in bryce 5 for the last 36+ hours...... it contains 68 objects and 623540 polygons. my comp is not slow by any stretch of the imagination here are some specs: 2.54 ghz processor; dual 80gb raid drives (raid 0 stripe (for speed)); 1GB of 32 bit rd-ram; and a Nvidia Geforce9550.......
i have left the comp to render for 3 days now on the best setting, including 256 rays per pixal, as i do with all of my other images that i render. I usually expect them to be done after 3 days because it is on the best setting; i leave it rendering over night BTW. I am trying to render this image @ 1600x1200 and this rendering has never been past the first pass of the rendering bar.... it gets to the landscape and just stops. I have neve had this happen before.... has anyone else encountered the same problem?

yeah - anytime I try to render higher than 1280x1024 on Bryce that happens. It's frustrating, I know. Especially when you know you have something good and it never finishes...it just seems stuck. I end up stopping and changing the size or giving up altogether. I hope someone has a suggestion as to how to avoid this happening because it's been bothering me as well. : (

good to hear that it is not just me

I don't know anything about this, but I have got to say, you have a sweet computer there sherpa!

ya, thanks...... It has water cooling also from Koolance

I'm probably going to have to get some more cooling for my computer. The average temp is 31°C. Whats your average rate?

22-25

31 Is nothing to worry about. Mine runs at 43 at idle and can get up to 58 at load depending on ambient temps, but then again it is a 3GHz CPU, and I'm in Africa, so that's to be expected.

Those Koolance system are extremely cool. I thought of getting one myself, but they are unaffordable over here. :(

ya, there are some things that i think are better than that koolance system. there are some electronic kooling systems like Peltier kooling systems. The peltier kooling system is what my CCD camera uses. it can cool to -40 c below ambient......

Yup, I agree about those Peltier's they can take temps, wayyyyyyyy down, but they are almost unaffordable (and mostly not available here). Unless you are into some serious overclocking, you wouldn't need anything near that.

CPU's need a constant temp, as long as there aren't huge rises in temperatures between idle and load, it should be fine.