rendering improments in 2.5 alpha 2

here is a test render:
the cone in raytraced trasparency, the sphere is a raytrased mirro, the hair is using zbuff to fade the ends, the monky is repeated by a array modiphier, and has SSS. the backround is a NURBS surface. there are 4 colored lights. (renderd on mac book pro 0sx 10.6, 2.53 core 2 duo, 4GB 1067 NHz DD3 ram, )

blender 2.49b
time: 1h 6m 21s = 3981 seconds











blender 2.5 alpha 2
time: 19m 54s = 1194 seconds











this shows more than the 3 times speed up.
here is a diffrence map of the two results:
one can see that the hair paticals in blender 2.49b where rendered larger than those in 2.5, there is a slight color diffrence, and the bump map on the monky is aplied with diffrent intesity.