Hey all.
I recently upgraded my CPU from an Athlon XP 1800+ to 3000+.  Of course 
I wanted to try benchmarking my system using POV-Ray.  I had stats for a 
few old scenes of mine, so I chose one and rendered it in the latest 
version of POV-Ray (3.6.1b).  Nice and fast, went from 1:04 down to 
0:51.  Then I tried rendering it again, and it took 1:14.  The next 
time, it took 1:25, then 1:34, then 1:41, 1:45.  Then it seemed to hover 
around that value.  When I restart my computer and repeat the process, 
it does a similar sequence.  The rendering time is always nearly the 
same, but the parsing time gradually increases to a saturation point.  I 
at first thought it might be an issue with the CPU, or memory, or their 
operating at different clock frequencies.  That doesn't seem to be the 
main issue, since it behaves in a similar way on our other computer, a 
Dell, too.  I also did lots of diagnostic tests, and everything checks 
out fine.  I think it may be an issue with POV-Ray itself.  Is it not 
freeing up memory?  What's going on in there?  It's a fairly simple 
little scene.  Other scenes where it's mostly rendering and doing little 
parsing are a lot more consistent.  It doesn't seem to have anything to 
do with the random number generation in the scene, because I tried it 
without it, too.  If anyone can offer some suggestions or answers as to 
what is going on, I'd greatly appreciate it.

------------------------------
Ben Scheele
Silmarillion: Ben's World
http://www.benscheele.com
------------------------------

Here's the scene:  (I've been rendering it at 320x240, antialias at 0.3)

camera{
   location 120*y
   look_at 0
   angle 40
}

light_source{ <50,300,20> rgb 1 }

background{ rgb .1 }

#declare r1 = seed(150);
#declare r2 = seed(200);
#declare r3 = seed(175);
#declare s = .35;
#declare d = .175;
#declare step = .25;

#declare E = 54;
#declare X = -E;
#declare EndX = E;
#while(X < EndX)

   #declare Z = -E;
   #declare EndZ = E;
   #while(Z < EndZ)
     #declare R = sqrt(X*X + Z*Z);

     #if (R <= E)

       #declare rot = 30*sin(d*R);

     box { -s, s
       pigment
{rgb<1+sin(d*R)+.3*rand(r1),.3+.3*rand(r2),1-sin(d*R)+.3*rand(r3)>}
       finish {phong 0.3 ambient 0.35}
     scale <step,1.5*rot+.001,step>
     translate <X,0,Z>
     rotate rot*y
     }

     #end

   #declare Z = Z + step;
   #end
#declare X = X + step;
#end

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