"Sadly, I prefer the default scanline renderer in Max to Mental Ray...."

I'm not surprised.  Max's scanline is actually faster than MentalRay at certain things, but not nearly as deep or dependable..  In fact, other than PRman, I can't think of any renderer out there that can match MentalRay's depth and flexibility.

If you do only stills, then honestly, any renderer should suffice.  Animation is what seperates the "men" from the "boys" as far as renderers go.  Scanline is great for NPR rendering, but it falls way short and has lots of problems when dealing with realistic animated rendering projects.

Poser 6 still has some problems when dealing with animation as well.  There are workarounds, but I'd rather not even deal with them.

---

Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.