Any CG experts? Question about networking/rendering

I am thinking about getting into 3dsmax or Lightwave along with maybe Poser and/or Vue D'esprit.

I have my new rig, see sig, which will be upgraded to Quad core.

I still have my old rig: AMD Athlon XP 2800+, 1gb RAM and a geforce 6600.

So my questions are:

1. First off, will my Quad core sig rig be even decent at all working with 3dsmax or Lightwave? I plan on doing creative/artsy/abstract stuff. I know it depends on how many objects/textures I am rendering, but can I expect somewhat decent speeds with rendering time? My old rig would maybe take days to render something at high res with AA and all that maxed out.

2. Is it possible to use this 2nd PC in a network to help speed up rendering?

TIA!

Your sig seams to be missing. Anyway, if I was running a quad core processor I would get as much ram as my system and checkbook could handle. 2 gigs minimum 4 gigs preferably(or whatever XP can handle. This seams a little overkill but your system will use it when you are rendering with four cores

Stay away from ATi cards when running Maya or 3ds max if possible. Most Nvidia Geforce cards will work well but are not approved by autodesk. I use a 6800 card and it works well for 98% of what i do. I am assuming you are a noob so I would not advise purchasing a high end workstation card that generally start at $1000. Nvidia Quadro fx cards are best but are expensive and bad for gaming if your into that. Save your money for that quad core processor and purchase more ram to go with it.

I would not bother trying to use the old machine. I could be wrong but I believe you will run into software license issues with these 3d animation programs. You would probably need a license on each machine to network them.

This software gets registered to your network card so don't even bother trying to install a single user license of 3ds or Maya on two different machines because it will not work.

Even with a high end machine rendering can take a great deal of of time so do not be surprised if rendering a 30sec animation takes hours if not days or even weeks to render as your scenes become more complex.

If your into overclocking I would suggest not doing it. This can cause a great deal of problems when working with this type of software that can be very buggy if it does not like your system.

I would also focus learning one of these applications at a time. Programs like 3ds max are extremely complex and can take a great deal of time to learn and years to master. If your into composting effects into video I would go with light wave. If you want to model and animate I would go with 3ds or Maya. I am a maya user. There is not a great deal of difference in terms of capabilities between Maya and 3dsmax, especially for someone starting out. It is more of what you are most comfortable using. I find that Maya is slightly cheaper and there tends to be more learning resources for it. From what I have seen more people use Maya but of course there will always be the die hard 3ds users.

Hope this helps.