wasn't sure if i should put this in hardware or software, but here it goes.
I've recently been getting into 3d rendering using daz studio, im loving it, just wish it would render faster.
I am running a AMD Phenom 2 965 Black edition, 16gb of ram, 2 500gb hd in raid 0 (for speed not redundancy) this machine up until now was primarily gaming, coding, and Photoshopping. hence why I never buy Intel processors, ive never had the need for the raw power of an I7 or wanted to pay the price, and the 965 black is still awesome for gaming, new games coming out still default to ultimate settings on this machine because most of my money when I upgrade is dropped into the video card.

but I do also buy ati/amd graphics cards aswell, so octane does me no good.

so my question is, would it be worth it for me to pick up an nvidia card capable of running octane, and do the driver fight to get both ati/amd to run in the same system, because i still prefer amd graphics over nvidia for gaming, plus i don't want to spend $400 for the comparable nvidia card to my amd.

or wait, save up, and spend way to much money building an intel system?

I also have 2 small form factor core 2 duo machines collecting dust, and my whole house is on a gigabit network, would their be any advantages to setting up a network render between my gaming machine, the 2 core 2 machines, and my wifes A8 machine? or would slow down of transfering data over the network make it just as slow?

Thanks