Thank you all for your comments!
Alex: Would I check this through the Activity Monitor on Mac, and Task Manager on PC?
Walter: I made sure to clear the Disk caches on both systems right before RAM previewing.
Todd: My Macbook Pro has an HDD, not an SSD. My PC has both.
Here are a couple screenshots of the project, I hope it helps:


Text objects with Turbulent Noise effect, floating in space, with a .eps image as the ground, with a 3D one-node camera using depth of field, and 3D lights.
Thanks again,
David