You definitely want the strongest computer to be your render manager, as Bruno said. The one thing to keep in mind with using Intel chips is that hyperthreading is -not- the same as having an actual, dedicated core with its own L2 cache; the OS can show all the 'core' windows it wants, but when you are stressing the processor, as you do in rendering, you can start running into issues of memory pool congestion, cache fragmentation, and signal collision, which will =really= slam the brakes on whatever processes are occurring. As long as the processes being hyperthreaded are relatively straightforward, they can help the rendertime. But there is a threshold where they do more to slow the works than help them. Unfortunately, those points are very dynamic, and come and go as dataflow changes. I'm sure you've seen and heard all the bitching about 'I got that new Intel chip with X cores and it doesn't do jack!' yadda yadda yadda. Much of that is from trying to use multiple cores on a single threaded app, but the rest of the problem is the HT's trying to do something they simply can't.....because they are stealing idle time and creating the illusion of being something they aren't.