I have a test picture I run in Lightwave on every new PC, as a way of seeing how long it will take to do what I want. On the first PC, the pic took just over 3 hours, on the next it dropped to 1 hour and 40 minutes, the one after that got render time down to 50 min...
The PC after that was a considerable jump in power. I bought it off from Barnes before he went overseas. That one dropped render time to 6 minutes.
The new one? 2 min 45 seconds. And it's at the low end of the market.
A few more days and Xoanon's replacement, Mr. Kelso, will feel like an old friend.