How to improve 3DS Max6 performance??

[Harutium]

My 3DSMAX , specially when modeling is running extremely slow!
For a 3000 sq.ft. house with no trees or cars meshes the process of panning, moving, etc.
something is extremely sluggish!
My PC:
AthlonXP 2000*-1.66Mhz-480 Mb of RAM
On board Video Card:S3 ProSavage DDr- 32MB
It runs a light version of Windows XP pro: no XP visual fireworks/sound/screen saver/baground activities to a minimum,etc.
What do I have to do to improve 3DSMax to a more acceptable performance?
Thank you

[plastic_]

get a real graphics card.
pretty much anything would be better than your onboard card.
i recommend quadro cards (quadro4 900 or better), but even a 150$ geforce gaming card will increase performance dramatically.

[Syclone1]

Yea I also agree that a big part of your problem is your videocard, if your on a low budget try to find a GeForce 4 Ti4200 or a Ti4600, or if you want the best performance in the viewport you can go with a Quadro4 900 or better as suggestested by plastic_ .

-dave

[TutanMark]

Hi!

Agree with syclone... i love Nvidia products too. I have NV FX5600 ultra with 128mb, good performances and low costs in general. Of course if u want more u should take a look to a Quadro4 or something similar.

Marco

[tammo]

i agree.
NEVER buy an ATI card if your going to work with 3dsmax.
i have the newest radeon card and in max it is slower than my over two year old nvidia card.
plus you get nasty graphic errors like flickering polygons.
plus a broken fan after two weeks.

[LuKa]

i agree.
NEVER buy an ATI card if your going to work with 3dsmax.
i have the newest radeon card and in max it is slower than my over two year old nvidia card.
plus you get nasty graphic errors like flickering polygons.
plus a broken fan after two weeks.

Which latest ATI card are u refering to? X800Pro??

[Harutium]

Excuse my ignorance, :What is an "ATI" card?
Is it a brand or a category among video cards?
Thanks

[Erik de Graaf]

To optimize the performace of max 6 you can rename the mental ray directory. Since your on a vray forum i assume you don't use it.

Renaming the directory will result in max not loading mental ray and therefore saving precious ram.

Erik

[tammo]

i have a radeon 9800 pro club.
i will try to sell it and get the newest nvidia card,

[jujubee]

To optimize the performace of max 6 you can rename the mental ray directory. Since your on a vray forum i assume you don't use it.

Renaming the directory will result in max not loading mental ray and therefore saving precious ram.

I just came across this in the preferences and it probably works the same way (requiring a restart of Max.) Go to customize preferences mental ray - enable mental ray extensions and click it off... That way months later (if you so desire) you wont have to figure out what to name it back to the original folder name.

[budd]

does anyone know the tip about bloated file sizes, I saw it on a forum this morning, but can't remember where!
It mentioned - opening the xrefs panel then closing then typing (Gs) or (Cs) or something in the pink bar/listener window bit in the bottom left - someone said they reduced their file size by shed loads!

[jedisalf]

Re: How to improve 3DS Max6 performance??

My 3DSMAX , specially when modeling is running extremely slow!
For a 3000 sq.ft. house with no trees or cars meshes the process of panning, moving, etc.
something is extremely sluggish!
My PC:
AthlonXP 2000*-1.66Mhz-480 Mb of RAM
On board Video Card:S3 ProSavage DDr- 32MB
It runs a light version of Windows XP pro: no XP visual fireworks/sound/screen saver/baground activities to a minimum,etc.
What do I have to do to improve 3DSMax to a more acceptable performance?
Thank you

If you have MAX 5, it could be the C-dilla problem, go to the MAX site discreet.com i think, and look for the MAX downloads/support, you'll find the C-dilla 3.27 update that will take care of this problem.

I had this problem before, my MAX took too long to load, and then everything was sooooooooooooooooooooooo slow, even after closing MAX i had to restart my PC everytime cuz every other application was slow also, this was fixed updating the C-dill version.

[Syclone1]

Uh isn't he asking about max6?

-dave

[jedisalf]

oh...right!...i missed the title....anyways..that tip coud be usefull for someone.

[stefan]

To reduce unused stuff in your scene type gc() which is short for "garbage collection" in the listener. Safe the file.

Another good idea is to merge everything into a clean new scene.

If your graphics card begaves sluggish check if you´re using dual planes in the preferences. Turn it off in case you do. Some cards (including all the
GForce cards I ever had) have problems with this and can slow down considerable occasionally.

Stefan