Carrara and Amapi 7 are a great combo for me here. I do nearly all my rendering in Carrara, its the best renderer I have for the price (I had an old copy of Ray Dream Designer lying about... so I took the chance and snapped up Carrara, and glad I did.) With a few inexpensive addons, I can do effects that you can only do in high-end (and much higher priced) renderers. There are tons of better modelers out there than Carrara, give the demos a run and see what you prefer.