The new camera is fixed focus, meaning it is never out of focus. It is a bit smaller, and it has some additional features that WPILib doesn't take advantage of. Other than that, it is very similar in performance. In fact, I think that the older camera may have better color saturation than the newer one.
The cRIO-II is essentially the same speed as the older model, just smaller and cheaper. It does have more RAM, and the processor has more or better caching, but I have not seen dramatic differences in performance.
The reality is that vision processing is a valuable tool, but a hard problem domain. It works best when the scene being observed is highly controlled and/or predictable. It also benefits from having high resolution, high speed cameras feeding into high performance, dedicated processing. FRC has a basic camera, pretty limited processing power, and very unfriendly field for vision -- perhaps the floor could be covered in reflective diamond plate or Lexan as well
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From your post, it isn't clear if your team has attempted to work through the NI examples and tutorials. Similar to other elements in the kit, they will not guarantee a golden-gun, but they can be used to enhance your robot's performance for specific tasks. Plenty youtube videos show teams successfully using the camera and vision processing.
Please describe issues you have had in the past or ask specific questions, and I can help point out.
Greg McKaskle