There is one aspect in which Poser 7 outshines every earlier version: its ability to render really complex scenes.
I found out that the FFRender process can use more than 2 GB of address space. While it's still a 32bit program, it has used up to 2.5 GB on my WinXP64 rig while rendering a scene that had P5 and P6 choking with OOM errors - even at the lowest render quality settings.
Fast rendering? Depends on the machine and the settings. See the Poser 7 benchmark thread. In general, P7 renders faster when using Firefly.

I don't use Poser that often for final renders. Most of my scenes are VERY big and complicated (easily 20 human figures, plus lots and lots of environment props) so I render in Vue 6 Infinite 64 bit.
Does Vue have a fast render engine compared to the big guns like 3DS Max? I don't know. What I do know is that I have been able to render over 10 billion polygons in Vue, with over a hundred hires (2000x2000 and more) textures, where Max (I have 6.01, without additional render plugins) flunked out at less than a million, with less than a dozen of these same textures.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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