By a large margin, it would be preferable to have one powerful multi-core workstation than to have several lesser machines.  I didn't set out to get several machines, it's just that every 2-4 years I'd buy a new one in order to keep up with my increasingly demanding Poser habits (and as I learned more about computers), and so I inadvertently accumulated them.  Few people would be interested in a 4yr-old hot rod computer, so here they sit.  I do employ them for network rendering, so they earn their keep.  My first PC, Sarit, which I bought along with Poser 6, is still in service;  she has a HyperThreaded single core Pentium-D and 2GB RAM.

     The black Dozer chassis (partially visible in bottom right corner of photo) used to be my main machine, and I took the laptop Valkyrie to work with me so I could get some modeling done in the quiet time of the evening at the firehouse (well, if it was quiet).  But they are both 32bit.  Maxed out, but 32bit.  So after a few years, I got 64bit core-i7 Galadriel (silver Alienware in left foreground), then later the 64bit laptop Pixie (glowing blue and red keyboard in photo) so that I could work on bigger scenes at the firehouse.  Since the Dozer chassis was savaged in a storm, I rebuilt her in 64bit with 8 GB (the most the mobo will read).  She'll happily render for days at a time;  she has three 120mm fans and liquid cooling.  The Boxx desktop (center background of photo) is Cameron, 96 GB and dual HyperThreaded hex-core processors. 

     Now, I tend to model/map and do scene set-up on the older/lesser computers, and use the newer more powerful ones to render final images.  For rendering animations of reasonable pixel dimensions, I'll network all of them.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5