This is a great new Eonite :)
I understand the burn-out feeling you can sometimes get when working a long time on something and the need to "take a break". But it's nonetheless great to know that their will be a follow up and the improved control in the cloud placement doesn't mean the death of "Cloud Control".

Something important too, something that made me incredibly happy and would have justified the upgrade for me in any case is the new gamma control settings. It will have an impact on clouds obviously since it greatly influence the light distribution (or more accurately, the light transition curve between dark and light). I have been using a linear workflow for a couple of years now and it really change the way you light a scene.

As for the speed, I'm sorry, it's not what you think. I just got my 980X two days ago which is about 3.2 times faster than my "old" XQ6700, that's why it's faster. This being said, it's funny how our brain work, because, despite the fact that the render time is divided by more than 3, it still "feels" as slow (I guess it has to do with "expectations")