There is one other possibility that has been mentioned on this message board before. It is supposedly possible to set up multiple versions of the Vegas network rendering server to run on a single machine and set the core affinities so that each server is hosted by its own set of four cores. Each copy of the server has to use a different port number. I have no idea as to whether this would work or not, because I do not have an 8 core machine at my disposal. Further, whatever gains are made by this approach might be canceled out by the increased overhead and subsequent stitching of the render file back together.

Also, although I mentioned the Internal settings (and also stated clearly my opinion that they do very little good in this case), the suggestion that they "can hose your system" is probably not warranted either. Most of the Internal settings are either A) very straightforward and quite handy or B) do nothing of substance for most users. Although it is possible to select settings that might prevent Vegas from running, the Vegas manual explains how to restart Vegas with default settings. Even if this option failed, you could always reinstall Vegas. It is not likely at all that changing any of the Internal settings in Vegas would have any impact on your Windows installation or your hardware. In a production environment, there is zero reason to fool with the Internal settings, but that's not what this thread is about.