Quad Core slower than Dual Core?

[gilpo]

I haven't had a chance to test Vlado's suggestions as we are in the middle of a big project. When I do, I'll post what I find.

I do have a feeling it's either driver or bios related in some way. As a test, when I setup one of the systems, I didn't install the Intel chipset driver. That system renders about a minute faster than its identical twin with the Intel driver installed.

[digtlpete]

We found that increasing the Virtual memory size in window fixed the problems with our dual core machines. We are using 64bit windows so we increased the paging file to 8176mb and now they screem. Give it a shot.
For those who do not know how to do this: Right click on My Computer>properties>advanced tab>performance settings> advanced> virtual memory-change> set it to custom size and double whatever you are currently using. If you have a system with two phyisical drives set the paging only on the disk that does not have the OS installed on it. Thats it! Happy rendering! Thanks to Mark Kaufmann for fixing this problem.