it turns out it renders somewhat faster once one zooms in on the hair. maybe it's harder to do all the calculations when the hair polygons are relatively smaller (compared to the production frame) than when they are relatively larger. in addition, I shrunk the v4.1 model (and hair) to about 5 or 10% of import size, which might also be a factor. these poser models are coming in very large, compared to my previous experience with poser model imports to carrara.