What's your settings for sharpening and noise reduction? Once we know them we can make some suggestions for change to see if it helps.
CS4 used process 2003 while your current set-up uses process 2010. The new Adobe raw conversion process is known to need less sharpening and different noise reduction settings for a better result, so your comparison to the past makes sense from that perspective and supports Jeff's advice.
Other question, what happens if you import the raws "straight", i.e. without converting to dng?