USAMIKE, is answer to your question, I have Poser Pro on my new machine.  I still have Poser 7, but I have left it on my older machine.  The big difference between the two is that Poser Pro has a 64bit render engine, thus allowing you to access greater then 2GB of memory - Poser 7 will not give you that same power.

Still, when you slice it down, Poser does not have the most efficient render engine around.  In doing speed tests, I have not been super impressed at the differences between my i7 and the AMD Dual Core laptop.  This is not the processor's faults, obviously, it is really the fault of the render engine!

Carrara, on the other hand?  Wow, big difference.