[distcc] a basic question

[Amir Tal]

this may sound dumb to most of you, but note that i am NOT a developer, and 
have a very poor expirience with compiling code.
the largest projects i am compiling here are kde from cvs, gnome cvs, samba 
and some other small application for desktop use.
the machine i am working on it the most powerfull one on my network, and i am 
using 2 more machines (all running debian linux) with distcc.
all machines are connected with a fast 100mb connection.
since the distcc howto states clearly that its slower to move files accross 
the network then compile them localy (which makes sence) does it really 
improve performance to use distcc with my current configuration ? i still 
didnt do any benchmarks to test it.
i am using -j3 when compiling (since there are 2 more vollonteer machines, is 
this the best option ?

thanks,
tal.