Engineeringnerd, In my experience an 8 pin will work even on a 32" bar with full skip. It makes the saw more sensitive to the power band, until you get used to it it seems like an on/off switch and it is very easy to bog it to the off position. In Alabama on my ported 372 I run an 8 pin a 32" bar with a semi skip with square chain when cutting larger hardwoods. It works fine for every thing except locust and shag bark hickory. The black locust is just to hard for my depth guage hight and the hickory dulls the chain really fast, oh yeah, the same for post oak. Fortunately not many of these are large marketable logs.
The biggest thing on running a bigger drive sprocket is a very efficient chain grind. Just because a chain makes big chips and pulls hard does not necessarily mean that it is cutting efficiently.
If you have a muffler mod you are not to far from a ported saw. These saws are very easy to port and give very big results. I have not had any negative service life from a mild woods port on one yet, in fact I would say that the production goes up so much that the amount of wood cut in its life will go up considerably.