What would cause identical machines to render at different speeds?

[AlexP]

Have 4 identical render nodes, currently rendering an animation but 2 of these nodes are taking an extra 10-20 mins per frame.

Any ideas?

[alexyork]

Dodgy ram maybe? Run a Memtest on each node and see. Same with the OS HDD. Check that's all running at peak performance.

[AlexP]

Will check it out. They're only couple of months old so will be less than pleased if there are already any ram or hd issues!

[alexyork]

Also check that they're all running at the same network speed (Gigabit etc.)