The realtime viewport is awesome. Runs great on my system. Super speedy. Cycles is also super fast, and does appropriate area lighting off planes and inter-reflections which is really nice. In fact all lighting works subperbly (point lights, suns, and spot and area lights). Easy to bloom volumetrics without a pixel noise show.
Blender is really at the forefront of scaleable technology imo. It can do sooo much.
Going to give Vue a try today to test out it's lighting and water.