Quote - so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

QX6700 is 4 cores.  Everything else in the list including the AMD chip is 2 cores.  The names are confusing (and probably not by accident).  Try to get familiar with the specs to go along with the name, there is not a good pattern to predict what a chip is by deciphering the number on it.

Quote - 1)If my  machine is slow loading objects figures or Pz3s the bottleneck is most likely due to a slow hard drive.

I would say more along the lines of slow or insufficient memory and slow controller architecture; modern hard drives really don't vary terribly much in speed.  Basically all new hard disks are 7200rpm and have roughly the same performance characteristics unless you go VERY cheap or VERY expensive.  It is useful to have 1-2GB of memory even under Windows XP 32bit.

Quote - 2)if my machine is slow posing figures and moving through a keyframe timeline then my video card is most likely the biggest bottleneck. 

Do you see your hard disk light coming on a lot while you work?  then you are low on memory, and a faster video card may not help you.  but generally yeah, a video card helps viewport performance out a lot, because that is all OpenGL.  Processor also has a big impact as Louguet pointed out (OpenGL is a partnered software/hardware graphics engine).

Quote - The next set of questions deals with whether you woudl be better off with one big machine with 2 quad cpus (8 cores) or say 2 machines with 2 duo cors renderfarmed (with 8 cores.)

You would be better off rendering your work in another application regardless of hardware; just this morning I rendered a scene in Poser (or I should say, tried to) with two figures, hair, a nonreflective floor, and a reflective opaque background  (basically a mirror) at manual minimum settings except for 1 raytrace bounce.  Two hours !!!! later, it was about 8% done.  Rendered the same scene in Vue on the same hardware, done in about 6 minutes.

I have no opinion on renderfarming because I've no experience with it.

Quote - 3) Is it an advantage if you have the one machine with say 4 gig or ram (assumign a of course a 64bit system) instead of say one duo core with 3 gig and the second with one gig?  For example, if you are rendering a large scene will the machine with only one gig potentially start swapping off the hard drive slowing the rendering process down?  Any other ideas?

 

With a 64bit OS I would consider 4GB the minimum, really.  If you are staying with 1GB then what's the point in upgrading the OS at all?  That's the big advantage, no practical limit to memory.  I'll be going with either 4 or 8GB (if I can get the ASUS board I have in mind to take 8GB).

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