My laptop...... i5 2.5ghz, 6Gb Ram (yes 6 only) and a ATI Radeon HD 7450m with 1Gb of Ram, yes that's about it. Poser Pro 2012 installed and most of the OpenGL features are enabled.

I can easily add 8 fully clothed figures without the whole system getting sluggish and my specs are way way lower then yours. My record so far.... 19 fully clothed figures all with high res body & clothing textures. There are 47 smaller props, like helmets and weapons and 18 large props (siege engines, towers, walls, gate) and one huge landscape prop, everything with textures ranging from 1500x1500 to 4000x4000. System still runs fine, but I can't add more otherwise I can't render. Poser Pro 2012 responds well.

Lucky perhaps, no I don't think so. A couple of weeks I build a scene situated on one of Stonemason's cities, with at least 15 building visible. In it are 10 fully clothed figures and 12 detailed vehicles. Again no problem at all and I've got lot's of room to add more to this scene if I wanted to do so.

The next one has 9 fully clothed figures..... several layers of clothing. Then there are 7 monster figures in the scene, a city block and several props like weapons, helmets and other stuff. Again, no problem, my laptop is plowing away happily and I'm no where near the limit yet.

In other words, if my far inferior system can do this, your superior system by far should be able to hold 8 fugures without you even noticing it at all. Perhaps it's time for a thourough system check up? What's all running in the background? Virus or something like that eating away system resources?

one thing I would do is change the OpenGL settings in Poser to sReed and see what happens. Does it improve or not at all? If yes, you're graphics card is the problem. If no, switch to OpenGL again and start enabling and disabling features there to see the effects on Poser. As others have stated, check which graphics card is enabled. I've got the intel one switched off completely, the laptop only uses the ATI card, the better and faster one.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk