to test the new ray-traing optimisations i chose a slightly unusual test: a very high poly scene with ambient (ray-traced lighting) (left, the legs each have just over 6 million vertices, the total seen has just under 23 million verities, a lot!!! )
in blender 2.48b it took 46 minutes and 1 second to produce this.
in blender2.5 r23664 it took 6 minutes and 3 second.
My secondray system wich this test was run on is and old linux box with a 1.8Ghz single core Amd and one gb of ram, the file size is just over 780mb.
edit: i used the following render settings:
AO ray traced 5 samples using add, and plain.
osa:8
50%:HD size
all object have no define material
and one sun raysadowed
