SolidWorks 2014 Professional 64 bit
Core I-7 2.8GH quad core
Does the final render window need to be always on top? It can be minimized so other work can be done, but does that slow it down? It's using almost 90% of the CPU, with the rest being used by Internet, e-mail, SolidWorks in the background of course, plus background stuff. It's taking over 30 minutes to render a simple assembly, using Maximum quality.
I would also concur with Dave about using Best mode instead of Maximum, You can also schedule your renders to run after your normal working hours if rendering times are an issue.
Carl, rendering is a monster of a job, especially if you're using optical effects. Don't start your render until you can't walk away from your scene.
30 minutes for a still isn't an outrageous amount. For a video, it might be untenable and, in that case, I'd look for ways to reduce the workload (rendering passes, compositing in effects, etc)
-and what Dave said is spot-on, Often, you can't distinguish between good, better and best unless you're dealing with lots of reflections and if you've set the render to "maxiumum" you should know the specific details you're trying to bring out.
Thank you Dave, Derek, John, for the responses.
So does it matter if the render window is visible rather than minimized?
You can minimize the window without any ill-effects to your render.
Use Best Quality, the time difference is huge but you will hardly tell the difference in image quality.
I have dual 6-core Xeon CPU's and it still takes some time to render a 4000x3000 pixel image with Best quality. Silver material adds significant time to the render.