hmmmmmmm interesting…
I’ve seen this problem as well, but with an Intel Dual-proc Core2Duo.
It was an intermittent problem that I haven’t been able to reliably duplicate.
Hi I have also found this problem when using large bucket sizes, it seems to fix itself with very small buckets..
sounds like a ram issue as smaller buckets use less ram
so u solved with 32 as bucket size? or what?
I have it (the buckets take forever to be rendered) again and now I don’t know from what it happen I think too is a memory problem with DR and dual core cpu but would like to know better how to avoid it
thanks
I noticed this particularly when switching to a machine with less ram. Also seems to happen more when rendering materials that are refracting/reflecting. Good time for a coffee though - I thought it might be Vray looking out for my health and making sure I take a break 
I see the same problem with one scene but not with another. I think the main difference is that the scene that takes long has hundreds of lights. And there is no difference if they are IES or normal. Could this be the reason?
I’ve just moved from max8 + RC2 to max9 + RC3 and started noticing the problem. never had done before…
Same here. Upgraded to Max 9 and RC3 and notice a hang on the last bucket, even without using dr and keeping bucket size at 32. The status says done, but you still have to wait.
yup very frustrating. I thought it might be lag saving the irrad map, but nope. please fix this!
And it’s not just with buckets. Even when you cancel a light cache it still takes just as long to unfreeze. I haven’t been working with RC3 for that long but it seems like some scenes do it and others don’t. But once it starts it will keep on doing the same thing.
I farmed a job out to Respower and all of the images froze on the last 3 “frames”/cpu’s. I canceled and restarted the images many times finally 1 of the 5 original images finished.
The Respower people said:
“This is normally exceedingly rare, although you are using a beta version of V-Ray, so it is conceivable that something is triggering a bug there.”
I am using 1.5 rc3.
ya I just dont recall having these issues until moving to 1.5, possible rc3. But then I also switched to 1.5 about the same time as switching to max 9, so hopefully its not just coincidental.
Just PMed you Vlado…
FYI - I’m having this problem as well…even when taking the bucket size down to 8x8. Not all files do this and each time I render the hanging bucket occurs in another location.
This resolved for RC4 or above?
TIA,
ME
It’s really driving me crazy. Even if I cancel a low res. light cache pass, it still takes about 30 seconds to unfreeze. It makes test rendering very painful.
Any update on this problem?
I’v noticed this problem before but with my current scenery (1.6mil polygons and a lot of objects) it is particulary irritating, taking up to 4 mins to for the last bucket to finnish up…
Having the buckets reduced does have a positive effect on the rendertime but the problem still persists…
geertvdp, it sounds like max is just trying to unload the geometry from ram which can take a while especially if max has started to use virtual memory
Noticed that I don’t have this problem any more in R4
Hmm, when do we get that one? 
I’ve just upgraded to SP3a, and now I’m having this problem with Backburner jobs. My current scene uses two render passes, the Animation Pre Pass and the Animation Render pass. On about 10% of my machines (I have a 50+ computer farm), the render will get down to the very last bucket and then will just sit there for hours with no CPU usage! Both the Pre Pass and the Render pass has this issue. If I kill the Backburner server and then restart it, another computer will pick up that frame and finish it fine. The computer that was stuck will then get assigned a different frame and it will complete it just fine.
Max 2009, VRay SP3a, Backburner 2008.1