I tried my old Workstation (9 year old Dell T7500 w/Nvidia Quadro FX 4800) and it took forever. The Quality Render RedSDK GIF was 937s and the Advanced Render RedSDK Majo_HQ — 2146s. The big different, to me, is the old machine uses 4 cores/threads, while the new one uses 48 threads. I'm waiting for the "pre-processing" (in LightWorks) to go to multi-threading, not just the painting of the screen. Currently, pre-processing still uses “1” core, which really sucks and the painting of the screen uses all 48.

I agree with John! Some operations as "pre-processing render" and loading/saving drawing, smesh smooth level and etc. still uses “1” core/thread of the processor. This could be to improve in the next versions TC for better work, a better experiences with more complex/bigger drawings. Now for the render is more important how "strong" is the processor! More cores/threads is better than a high level graphic, but it is only my opinion 

Maybe someone from development team can explain better, What is needed for faster render?

I asked for a preferred system configuration a few years ago, and a couple times since I became a Beta Tester.

I have yet to get a response.


Jeff

I'm still not convinced that the GPU is the biggest boost, at least not with this drawing. I believe that CPU core count is more important. I compared my render times of my old 660SC GPU to my new 1060SSC with 2015 P-P:

    2015  Adv Render GI_Fine_HDR   660SC  67 sec,  1060SSC 55 secs.

Now, with the 1060SSC I compared 2015 to 2017
    2015 Quality GI_Fine  57 sec    2017 Quality GI_Fine 101 sec.

I also ran the new files on 2017 with the 1060SSC
    Adv Rend Majo HQ  Full screen 1920x1080   198 sec
                             Save as PNG @ 3840x2160  1191 sec
                             Save as PNG @ 800x800  151 sec

Between Jeff and I, I have the better GPU, my 1060SSC vs his 970, but he has the better CPU, my i7-3770 (8 Threads) to his i7-5820K (12 threads). John is getting remarkable times due to his 48 threads.
The only real way to compare GPU's is to have a setup and swap out only GPU's and compare differences between gaming cards and workstation cards.


EDIT::  I should note that during the rendering process, GPU usage was at a steady 35%, CPU was at 100%.  I went into advanced render options and enable 'Use GPU', but that resulted in a rendered image that was only black and white with none of the textures applied.