DAZRand over at the other forums has stated Studio 4 should not be run with CMS turned off, that is will cause stability issues and even if that is not the case now it is likely to be the case later. That being said I turned it off, I have no need for it.

For hardware based renders Daz Studio 4 uses OpenGL, which is all video card, RAM and CPU come into play as well. For the software renders (which are the much more detailed ones that take longer) DS4 may be licensing 3Delight 9 instead of 8.5 which was used for DS3. Software renders are stricly CPU and RAM, the video card is used to update the image on the screen but unless its a rendering engine that supports GPU acceleration your Video Card is sitting this opperation out (both 3Delight used by Studio and the current implimentation of LuxRender via Relalty do NOT support the existing GPU option in these engines) Any software based render performed by Studio is passed off to 3Delight to perform (or if you use Reality it goes to LuxRender). Keep in mind 3Delight, and LuxRenderer are not developed by Daz. 3Delight is it's own company. Lux is open source, Reality is a purchase plugin but well worth the price.

Lights for 3Delight in Studio is an artform in itself and continues to be. If lights are a nightmare to you, and to a good portion of other Studio users the Reality plug-in for Studio to render to Lux simplifies this to the level of joy. Unfortunately Reality does not work with DS4 and no ETA on the development of a version of Reality that does. The good news is the developer is an amazingly talented developer and artist as well so I expect it will be soon and for both the Windows and Macintosh platform.

Loading content menus and loading files feels slightly faster than it did in DS3. I'm on a quad core i7 an running off my SATA 3GB/s which is going to be faster than running it off a USB2.0/3.0 or FireWire 400/800 drive external but the lags in DS3 don’t seem to be there. That being said I set up my content by hand, I'm not letting Studio manage it, EVER.

The interface is broken into smaller subsections to try and limit clutter but it's bigger, it got very limited customization at this time and it often takes more steps to do the same thing as it did in Studio 3. That being said I know one of the developers over at Daz was working on a "classic" interface for DS4 but no ETA as to when it will be available.