The differences between 2.79 and 2.8 to me at the moment are quite vast in 2.8 you have evvee openGL and cycles in 2.79 no Eevee but you have the internal and the game engine all this in both versions work easily without GPU I don't do any GPU rendering. 2.79b is the latest stable release I have 2.79.5 and 2.8 as zip files in their own folders mainly just to test new stuff out. Anything you create in 2.79 will load into 2.8 as long as any addons used to create are there as well. 2.8 and 2.79.5 are both prone to crashing (having said that I have only ever suffered once from a crash that I deliberately tried to create lol ) If you look at my hair shader thread below the last image is a G8 imported directly into into blender from daz in Dae format, she came across with all textures in a file you just need to assign them to their correct locations which are all listed havn't done this in 2.8 as yet though. Doesn't give you a definitive answer but does give a little info to help I hope.

Incantrix