The PT version is clearly more realistic, but it does lose some of the nice lighting and contrast in the non-PT version. Interesting though not too surprising. PT won't always provide more aesthetically pleasing results, just more realistic.
I think in this case once you eliminated the noise in the PT render, you could do some post processing on an EXR to improve the tone range and contrast, and end up with a more realistic and more pleasing image overall. But the scene itself looks great, in general.
- Oshyan