Pre calc is making render take longer - NOT Blended IR

I am using Max 2009 64 bit with Vray 1.5 SP3a

I’ve never had a problem using precalculated GI before. But in this scene I am working with, for some reason when I precalculate the GI, the render times go up 10x.

I pre calc the light cache, then I pre calc the IRmap with multiframe incremental, then I render. The frames that come out look fine, but are rendering around 50 minutes per frame.

If I just set everything locally to single frame, non pre calculated GI, and hit render it will render in about 5 minutes per frame.

There’s nothing complex in the scene. Only 4 lights (photometric with IES files). Fairly simple materials with nothing above 8 subdivisions.

AA is set to Adaptive DMC: 1 and 4

DMC Sample noise threshold: 0.01

Any thoughts?

do you have lots of VRaylights in the scene?

No, just the 4 photometric IES lights in the scene.

Do you have lots of proxy objects or other dynamic geometry in your scene? If yes, then you can try to set the light cache to single frame mode with a very small number of subdivs (f.e. 100).

Best regards,
Vlado