okay.. does using normal maps over bump or displacement maps increase render speed?  Because I grabbed PixPlant (automatically creates normal, spec, disp maps) and created some normal maps for a texture I'm working on.  Got everything loaded into reality and tweaked my materials the way I wanted them.  Just a simple scene.. model, clothes, hair, alpha channel so I can add in a 2-background and my render is running like 4x faster than I've EVER rendered