Update: 18 Minutes in, GI is done calculating, it's about 1 8th done with the actual image, ETA: approx. 10 minutes.

Guess I under-estimated my room-mate's computer, and the simplicity of the scene XD


edit: okay well, not too much of a difference, I over-estimated the effect of the HDRI. But let's do a side-by-side comparison.




Post-thoughts: Well it's clear it didn't make much of a difference, could be the materials, might go back and check later, but for the most part, this experiment was a loss. The DoF obviously wasn't set far enough back, or close enough, to the main focus point; The HDRI didn't show up very well in the reflections, and the increased Anti-Aliasing didn't do much to improve image quality. But this whole thing is a learning process, and I'm glad to have had this opportunity to mess with the settings of an interesting scene. Thanks a bunch deridor.