Operaguy,

     Here is a quick run of the simple render numbers run as you requested, after an initial "foundation" render to load things into memory. (The dialogs still show textures being loaded and shadowmaps rendered on subsequent runs, but it is faster than the initial run, so maybe the second time is quicker because these things are now in ram rather than being loaded from the HD?)

Simple Low Quality Render (buffered)
Render time = 123.58 seconds. 1 Core/1 Thread
Render time = 125.03 seconds. 1 Core/2 Threads
Render time = 79.23 seconds. 2 Cores/2 Threads
Render time = 86.87 seconds. 2 Cores/4 Threads

Notice that the render times went up in this case if the number of threads was set higher than the number of cores. Even though there was a slight benefit in the high render quality test in the previous thread from going to 4 threads, it may be a hit or miss thing depending on how the workload is split based on the composition of the scene. I'll try to test that out further later tonight. (Previous informal tests had led me to chose 2 cores/ 2 threads for my renders).