Hey there Pokeydots,
I know you have said that you downloaded one from DAZ but the free one you found here at Renderosity is still available on that site.

What changed was the link to that particular item ... here's the new direct link:

http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Basketball_PoserProp.zip

Here's the page link for the freebies on that site:
http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone.com/poser/freebies/

Best Regards,

Cameron

I figured I would also try network rendering using one additional PC.

Same setup as before (i7 / 12GB RAM) plus a
Windows XP Pro
AMD 2.99 Ghz / 2GB RAM

C7 Pro (32 bit) - 3 minutes, 58 seconds
Networking provided 2 additional threads

C8 Pro (64 bit) on the i7 PC and 32 bit render node on the AMD  PC - 10 minutes 24 seconds
Networking provided no additional threads.  Although the 2nd PC was showing as available it never changed to working,  I uninstalled / reinstalled the render node software twice with the same results.

I still need to load the 32 bit version of the C8 Pro application on the i7 PC to see if it's a 64 bit problem.

Windows 7 64 bit
Intel i7 920
12GB of RAM

Ran as-is using C8 Pro 64 bit - 10 minutes, 20 seconds
This seemed very slow

Ran again as-is using C7 Pro (32 bit) - 4 minutes, 48 seconds

I am very surprised at the bog down when C8 was rendering the transparencies.

Guess I will load the 32 bit version of C8 Pro and see if there's any improvement.

Thanks for posting the benchmark file.