Hello and welcome to the forums
1) I understand that MB3D uses Cpu solely to process and render images? meaning I dont need a super expensive Gpu card? like a quadro for example. Or does the Gpu card play a role in improving rendering times. I am sorry if this has been asked before. I don't want to spend any extra money on gear i might not utilize.
I was hoping somebody a little more knowledgeable would be able to give a more complete answer, full of techno-babble and all, but since not - my reply will have to do...
GPU is nice for applications that use it, and there are many wonderful fractal generators and video editors and other art programs that do, but Mandelbulb3D does not make use of it and so for this particular program - no difference at all. But there are programs you will not even be able to start without one!
2) Also does RAM have any impact on rendering times?
Another interesting aspect of building a workstation is the CPU. Does anyone know if the software is capable of utilizing duel CPU's? As i understand it different software are created differently and not all graphics rendering software may be able to utilize more cores or duel CPU's.
RAM is important, but sinceMB3D is a 32 bit program it is limited in how much it can address. If you are on a 64 bit system, it will still run as a 32 bit program. That means no more than, I think, 3GB Max (maybe up to 4 - I forget). The extra ram Will help if you are running other programs at the same time - MB3D can run at it's max RAM use and not be stealing it from other programs, or even the Operating System, which needs some for itself to run.
1)3) Also does anyone have any experience with mandlebulb 3d to know if a fast i7 cpu works more efficiently then lets say 2x Intel Xeon E5-2420 Sandy Bridge-EN 1.9GHz (2.4GHz TB) 15MB L3 Cache 95W Six-Core (12 Cores Total).
Naturally it would seem that the 2x cpu's would produce better rendering times but because i am not a tech oriented guy i am just not sure.
I think a faster CPU with the most cores would be best, but not all are created equal. This is where I really can't help much. I can say that being an iterative system, where future results are dependent on those already calculated, the benefits of many cores are limited in some ways. It's not like rendering a 3D Picture in Blender (or Carrara, Maya, 3DMax, etc) where each pixel can be calculated independently and networking many computers speeds things up dramatically.
Hope that made sense and helped a little.
Have fun and be sure to post some of your work! It's always nice to see new styles and approaches to these things