Eric: Yes I would be very interested in seeing how you fair with the 8 cores and Carrara, since I am looking at the same computer. My dilemma right now is that Hexagon is getting pretty long in the tooth concerning new hardware and Leopard. It's not a UB ported yet and even on a Power PC, it does not run very well in Leopard. I use Hexagon to model and Carrara for everything else. I can model in Carrara, but Hexagon is so much better and flexible. I would hate to have to learn new software, but if I don't hear something soon with Hexagon, I might be taking a closer look at Modo. But Carrara will be with me for the forceable future, Hex or no Hex. I just hope that it's sufficiently threaded for 8 cores. I have used network rendering using two dual Macs, so I would think it works fine with at least 4 cores.