Video Card helps massivly when setting up a scene, have noticed huge differences as I have upgraded through various cards. .... but no help when rendering

i7 processor all the way, poser 8 takes advantage of multithreading,there are 8 threads to use in an i7 compared to 4 in a standard quad processor . Renders are way quicker than any of the previous incarnations of poser you will need 4-6 gig of ram - only seen poser 8 use about  5 gig max (uses much less in previous versions)