Just for kicks and giggles, I decided to re-render the same scene/hair that's in post #40, this time using the FinalRender engine, rather than MentalRay, with comparable settings. The rendertime and other info is stamped on the image above. I actually saved 30 seconds on that frame just by using FR over Mentalray, without any apparent loss in quality there. Hmmmm.
Tools : 3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender
v2.74
System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB
GPU.