3ds Max :: Lighting Facets On Smooth Surface?

basically the issue is the lighting relics (little triangles) inside the sphere that is in the middle of the scene at this frame. I've masked off the rest of the frame as this is a current job so I'm not sure if I can post it fully. The animation basically shows a closed sphere which animates towards the camera and opens to reveal whatever is inside, which then animates, hence the use of the Sky Portal, to brighten up the inside of the sphere once it's so close.

The sphere was originally a sphere created in Max with pretty high settings, smooth modifier added and since then it's been converted to an Editable Poly for reasons I can't remember (I'm 300 hours into this project). I'm not in a position to mess with the geometry now unless it's absolutely necessary.

I've been trying to set up the Final Gather and GI to get a nice smooth surface, I don't usually use GI at all, just FG which may be an issue in itself, my research this morning suggested I should turn on GI... but anyway - here's the scene:

Using Mental Ray

One Daylight system, one Sky Portal at point of camera, facing the sphere, no other lights

Render Frame Dialog settings:

Image Precision = Medium (min 1/4 max 4)
Soft Shadows = 1x Default
Glossy Reflections = 1x Default
Glossy Refractions Precision = 0.75x -Medium
Final Gather Precision = High
Max. Reflections = 4
Max Refractions = 6
Geometry Reuse Off
FG Reuse Off
Production (not Draft)

I've attached an image showing the Render Setup Dialog settings.

3DS Max 2011 / Showcase 2011 (Backburner 2008.1.1)
Mac Pro (running Windows 7) all 64 bit
Intel Xeon E5520 @ 2.27GHz 2.39GHz (Dual) 16GB Ram
NVidia GeForce 9500 GT x2 + GeForce GTX 285