Tips for speeding up 3ds Max

Experiment with settings in the following areas:

• If you use the mental ray renderer:
  • Ray-Trace Acceleration, adjust the parameters for the BSP method,
  • There is no way to tell a renderer to use more memory, however you can make sure that it's not doing its best to conserve memory by verifying that Conserve Memory in Rendering > Render Setup > Processing tab is not checked,
  • see Zap’s blog post on mental ray thread priority to maximize render performance at the cost of interactivity (or maximize interactivity at the cost of a little bit of render performance).

• Optimize scene where possible, use ProOptimizer on as many dense objects as possible. ProOptimizer Modifier Documentation
• Right click on a modifier and choose Collapse All in the stack. This removes all history, so be sure to save the scene under a new name to avoid overwriting original scene!
• Where possible reduce number of lights in scene:Fewer lights means fewer calculations and therefore faster render times.Use the Light Lister to disable lights where possible.

• Disable Receive / Cast Shadows on objects not needing them:
  • right click on the object > Object Properties > Rendering Control >Receive Shadows/Cast Shadows
• Do the same for “Visible To Reflections/Refractions"
• Disable/Exclude objects from Caustic and GI Calculations:
  • right click on the object > Object Properties > Mental Ray, uncheck where necessary options for Final Gather, Caustics and GI, etc.
• Reduce the number of reflections/refractions in the scene. Fewer reflection/refractions results in shorter render times.
• Sometimes BIOS power-saving options can impact performance in 3ds Max:an example is the cstates option in the BIOS of Dell machines which can impact the viewport performance of 3ds Max. Switch off the power-saving options in the BIOS and instead use the ones in Windows Control Panel, that way you can adjust the settings without rebooting the machine.

Source: area.autodesk.com/blogs/maxstation/v9-tips-for-speeding-up-3ds-max--3ds-max-design