At 8 million polys I get a filesize of 662 MB! Big eeh, is that really normal?

yeb, that’s normal. the files in mb 1 were much larger.

cant help but feel that aside for the ugly awkward user interface, zbrush really had mudbox nailed to fence on this one.

http://www.mocapone.com

Yeah, considering Zbrush can never really show you what the model actually looks like, 2.5d fudged perspective, Mudbox files sizes for real polygons, fair trade. Mudbox is the Rolls Royce of sculpting and texturing, get a better machine you will see, Zbrush runs the same every machine, and has a capped polylimit.

Primary System: DELL T7500, Windows 7 Pro, Dual Six Core Xeon 2.8GHZ ,256GB SSD Primary HDD, 2TB for Caches,Blu-ray writer, Quadro 5000 2.5gb Graphics & 32 GB DDR 3 1333 MHZ Ram. Secondary System: Dell T5400 Dual Quad Core Xeon 2.66GHZ, Quadro 4600, 8GB ram.
Mudbox Max limit touched on single mesh of an African Elephant 272 Million.
My Reel: http://vimeo.com/26384581