Host Machine:
a) Intel Q6600 @ 3.1something GHz, XPx64, 16GB RAM, Nvidia QuadroFX 1700*
b) Intel Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz *(original frequency), XPx64, 4GB, ATI Radeon 3870 
c) Intel E5200 @ 2.5 GHz (o.f.), XPx64, 4 GB, ATI Radeon 3870 
d) Intel E5200 @ 2.5 GHz (o.f.), XP 32 Pro, 4 GB, ATI Radeon 3870

RAM is identical in all machines: DDR2-800 GeiL Black Dragon PC2-6400U CL4 (2048 KB per module)

• the graphics card has NO effects on render time (everybody says).
  ** this is one of my existing machines, which normally runs at 3,1(something) GHz,
      I did reset it to 2.4 to be able to compare and took 4 of it's 8 Gigs of RAM out.

All machines are connected via a regular D-Link DGS-1016D Gigabit Switch, 16-Port.
All system HDDs (where I also store the Runtime in case of machine "a") are WesternDigital VelociRaptors 150GB

I did sent the exact same remote renders one by one and took the time until the "ready" prompt appeared in Queue Manager on the host computer.

1st, of course, because there is no network transmission, is "A",  6min46 sec
2nd is "B", 8min12sec
3rd is "C", 9min52sec
4th is "D", 11min49sec (which was a nasty surprise for me)

In percent:
A=100 (index)
B=121%
C=146%
D=175%

I really don't know WHY the Quad at 2.4 is faster than an E5200 at 2.5, so I repeated my test after a network restart, with the same results. It's also obvious, that there IS a difference between XPx64 and XPx86,

The scene, by the way, contains a V4.2 with my "Lady2Be" morphs and her "regular" skin settings, YoannaHair (OOT/Bice I believe), a chair and a background by me, all textures are 4096², because the final renders will be 4096 high, the lights are one spot and two infinite (512pix shadowmaps for this test)

I attach the image and, just in case, flag this nudity.

The order of results are more or less would I would have guessed. The difference in B and C is probably due to the Q6600. A quad core CPU, a 64 bit OS and a 64 bit renderer should be faster at a given clock speed than a Duo core, all other things being equal. The difference in clock speed of 2.5GHZ over 2.4GHZ is not enough to make the Duo core machine as fast or faster than the Q6600. The 75% increase over using the 32 bit OS is interesting. I'll have to look at going to a 64 bit OS again I guess. Thanks for doing this little comparison.

Agreed... the Q6600 has 2 extra cores and 4 times the cache of the E5200 so it'd be very surprising if it were slower. Heck if poser had a better renderer, you would be seeing even more of a difference between the two.

The Queue Renderer (as SmithMicro defines it) uses **only 1 core.
**That's why I thought an E5200 would do (besides being a cheapnickel).

Conc. XPx64 - by far the better choice than 32bit, but I need one machine with this OS, can't get a driver for 64bit for my beloved Agfa Horizon A3 scanner...

If I find the time during the weekend, I'll do a test in Vue. Already curious...

Quote - The Queue Renderer (as SmithMicro defines it) uses only 1 core.

It uses up to 4 cores, depending on how many the machine it runs on has.

As Stewer said, it can use up to four cores. Queue Manager also uses FFRender64 with the 64 bit OS (just like Background Render) If you have the Dialog, you can see it starting up the FFRender64. Thus the improvement over the 32bit OS.

Aaaah, I see...

Someone interested in buying two Intel E5200, almost new... ;-]