UVs are done - I was more tolerant of distortion so I could get the most out of a 64x64 tex. Also managed to scrape off 4 more tris, for a total of 324. I'm pretty satisfied with the texel size.
Also Toolbag has less compression and optimization done by default, here's one example, http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2096054&postcount=124
I can recommend this one. It was a really good flow and clear instruction. http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/928/Stylized-Character-Modeling-for-Production#.U4CPIyhwWH8
You could always overclock those cpu's for more power. Third party coolers are pretty cheap and you can get >4ghz speeds pretty easily. Even my old i7 920 is running pretty stable at 4ghz.
Here you go: Hard Surface Tutorial http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max--cg-925 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_mEy5X-fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFSXtjFI9ig
Hmm, that looks awesome, but, I just looked that up and found: "While that shot was done in Modo, I found it just wasn’t able to handle a scene this complex. So it was off to my old friend Lightwave." http://www.oddballanimation.com/archives/914
Way too much money for that rig, that case, processor, and 2 graphics cards really jack up the price. You could build an i7 920 rig (overclock it to 4.0ghz), with a Geforce GTX 275, 9 gigs of ram, for around 1.3k