It really depends on the how many jobs are running in the machines and whether the jobs needs lot of processor time. So the best way you can do is: 1. more /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/meminfo or use some graphic interface to know about the hardware info of the different machines. As we know, fast cpu (SMP is better) and big ram is the best choice. 2. you may need to use "top" to see the system performance currently, it loads lots of jobs, you'd better check the second choice from the previous step. I d