This one has me stumped.
The Environment
Windows 7 x64, Server 2008 R2, Dell 2330dn network printer.
What Changed
Engineering-class workstations (whiteboxed) were upgraded with new motherboards & processors. Got more RAM. OS was deployed from a new image that included applicable updates, new version of SolidWorks, etc. No specific customizations were made to printer drivers or the print processor.
The Complaint
Printing is "prohibitively slow". The engineers claim that printing PDF documents for their engineering change notice (ECN) procedure now takes 5-10 minutes per print job.
What Really Happened
That's the kicker. After putting a stopwatch to the printing, I discovered this printer has almost exactly 30 seconds from clicking "print" to the first page out. Additional pages of a multipage document happen almost immediately, but print...