Here are my observations/stats on the zoning thread:

2 computers:
Pent II 300, 128 PC-100 Ram, Creative TNT 16M Vid card, cable modem
approx 1gig of Free Space left on HD

AMD K6-200, 128 RAM, Creative TNT 16M Vid card, cable modem
Approx 1gig of Free Space left on HD

~Main difference in H/W is processing power

Ping stats:
Ping to servers: < 80
No packetloss from either end.
Packet Transfer rate from servers: > 400
(it's great living in San Diego =P )

Testing:
Zoning to different areas
Zoning by death (same zone, reloading after dying)
recorded # players from current zone and destination zone
each test was with only 1 computer online at a time.

Results:
the AMD took about 45-60 secs to load zones, the Pent II took about
10-15 sec.

I have found when zoning in large cities or dungeons I get longer
load times (by 3-5 sec)

The times did not seem to change much with the number of players in the
zone i'm going TO. eg left zone of 45 players to zone with 75 players, and
vice versa. On average it was about a 3 sec more load time.

The times also didn't change when zoning into an area with
a lot of merchants vs very few or none. But # of NPC (non merchants) can
be a factor too.

The HD's on both machines lit up for the same amount of time (2-3 sec)
between zoning.

Tests were done both in Day and Night EQ time. In case vid rendering
played any factors.

Conclusion:
I did a few more series of experimenting, but it seems
to boil down to Processor speed; at least for me. I've read some posts
that are almost opposite of my findings, however, it wasn't mentioned
if it was the same zone or the player loads on that zone they were
comparing it to. e.g. comparing zone times of someone going from
south Qeynos city to north gets a 10sec load, to someone in Freeport
going to east or west freeport getting 15 sec loads may not be a fair
comparison.
I also noticed that the Character will show up on the other side
of the zone (as observed by another player) but my screen still show
it still loading. This seems to indicate that there is some procssing
still being done on the Client side even though the character has
already been loaded into the new zone. This was also verified when
I died (in the same zone I respawn in), I respawned or rather my Screen
unfroze right before I got a death blow from some Orc that just happend
to be camping on my spawning point. =) This tells me that my character
was active on the server, but my machine was still procssing info before
it could unfreeze my screen. On my Pent II machine, my character
appearing and my screen unfreezing seem to lag by 2-3 seconds.
I did play via 56k v90 modem on my Pent II a few times and noticed no
real difference on load times. I did notice teleporting chars/mobs and
had higher ping and packetloss ( >400 ping, 3-8% packetloss).

Disclaimer: All this is just my quick experimentation to see if my
AMD was worth using to play EQ on (Just set it up a few days ago). There
may be other factors that can disprove all of this. In anycase it was
my personal testing i thought i'd share with the List.

Just my few coppers...
//Aldaren the "zoning" Cleric of Tunare