Quote - When looking at my timings, keep in mind I'm doing these on a two year old laptop. Any current desktop with a Core 2 Quad is going to be 4 times faster.

Based on that conversation we had back in January about shadows and the dungeon cell rendering (originating in a discussion about Poser comics), probably faster if you're running a 64 bit OS.  For the smaller ones the difference won't be noticeable (when it takes about 7 seconds to render, and extra second or two doesn't mean much), but having all that memory available really helps for the big scenes.

That first Battle Bob: just three point lights?  Doesn't look like complicated shaders.  Back in January, when I tested a similar render (3 point lights, shadows), it took 20 seconds (quad core, 64 bit Vista, 8 gigs memory).  So about 12 times faster.  Obviously I have no idea what the new feature settings would do, but as a WAG I'd say maybe 20 minutes for that second one on my machine if I was testing.

A lot will also depend on the tweaks to the render engine: when I've compared some render times in various software I have, sometimes the newer machine and a newer renderer have had a synergetic effect, and producing faster than you'd expect.