I’ve been rendering a several animations recently. Nothing too complicated: low poly, a couple of lights and final gather. The renders start fine, but a few frames in everything starts to slow down. Sometimes a frame will take up to 4-6 times longer. I suspect a ram issue (I’m only running 1GB). Could this be the problem, and if so, are there any ways to optimize max? Or could it be something else? Thanks in advance.

UPDATE
After doing a couple more renders, I’ve found an unusual behavior. The render times fluctuate fairly regularly. At its best, one frame might take 10 seconds. Several frames will render at that speed, and then gradually slow down. After about 10 frames, the render time might be 3-4 minutes. After one very long frame like that, the render times gradually speed back up. The cycle repeats for the duration of the render. Not sure if that helps or complicates things, but I thought it was interesting.

It’s your ray tracing. Do you have any objects with transparency?

No transparency. No reflection or refraction in one scene at all. I thought it might be related to the raytracer, so I turned it off. No difference.