The first thing I noticed with all of these renders is that the image quality is poor.  I think that has far less to do with the renderer than it has to do with file compression and lighting.  I was able to get fairly decent results using the P4 renderer, and never had the advantages that Pro Pack had, but went straight to P5, and now P6.

You're right, you can't get the same results with the P4 renderer as you will get with Max, but you can get decent results (certainly much better than those you have posted), and then use postwork to polish the image.  There are some very nice lights in freestuff by Snowsultan, and others that will really help, but also make sure you save your renders at the best quality compression.  I always used the PSD format to export for my working files, then finished them up in PSP or PS.