I understood what you meant

Yes 3d work was hell back then but it was new, now companies have 20+ years of experience and reference material to draw upon whereas in the 80-90's it was a combination of discovering new things & the restrictions of the hardware of the time.
In a lot of ways things have not sped up a great deal, take your £1200 simple machine for example & render a single full HD frame with 1000's of objects & all settings on maximum like in a real movie & I think you will find many hours will pass before it is rendered. On the other side of the coin though the tools available now are more affordable & the creation process like modeling etc is more productive so more time is saved there I think.
I have to agree with you that I playing around with 3D now is a lot nicer than it was 20 years ago

Lee