Upon re-reading your thread i've realised that you know about the facetres variable thus making my reply even more useless to you!
Aren't these forums great!!
I have had this problem with ACAD r14 & 2000 and have never found a solution. What I have found is that the 'Rendered Object Smoothness' (FACETRES variable) setting in Preferences\performance can change which lines are shown or not shown without changing the current view.
Nevertheless this is...
For some reason my copy of AutoCAD r14 will only give me the choice rendering to a "File" or to the "Render Window" and doesn't even list the "Current Viewport" destination.
I have tried reloading "render.arx" without success and basically have run out of...