Ok using Maya2008, mentalray with the misss fast skin shader to render this baby out.
My problem is when zoomed out, the subsurfacescattering kills the detail of the normalmap, however when zoomed in it looks fine.

Full body shot, there is hardly any detail
http://visupoint.com/unleashed/ceraR1.jpg

zoomed in:
http://visupoint.com/unleashed/ceraR2.jpg

and the high poly mesh http://visupoint.com/unleashed/CERArender2%20copy.jpg which has none of these issues, so im guessing its something to do with the camera distance + lowres/normal map? is there a way to fix this?

In the max version there is a 'scale conversion factor' slider exposed in the advanced options area (should be in the Maya shader as well) which might help. From what I remember SSS is affected by a lot of things like scale, lighting method, etc and then normals instead of displacements is another variable... so no idea other then to play with that slider

thanks that was it(algorithm control for maya)!