Quote - My question:

I have a Quad core w/ Vista 64 bit, and 8gb RAM.  With Pro 7, I just easily rendered a scene--8 fully clothed V4's and 6 fully clothed M3's in rather detailed 'ballroom' set'.  The resource monitor showed the background renderer using 6.1 gigs (including OS) with virtually no disk thrashing.

Poser 7 would choke in its own blood on this scene (tried it).  Can Poser 8 handle such a thing?  If not, I think I should wait.  Ideas?

Thanks for any help.

Your CPU isn't going to make a world of difference, nor will your RAM or Poser 8's better use of CPU.
No 32 bit app is going to be able to render a scene using 6 gigs of RAM, without using your page file on your disk, but I'd venture to say Poser would simply crash.