http://www.geardigest.com/2007/08/ [...] index.html

Thinking about upgrading to a new version of Autodesk's 3DStudio animation and visualization software? We take a look under the hood of Autodesk's 3DStudio Max9 and pass along our verdict.

Jason's off the mark a bit when he refers to "rendering time". A long-time user myself of Max, more memory doesn't reduce rendering time. It'll help work around large complex scenes, but won't reduce rendering time at all unless the scenes are rediculously large - and even then it's not that significant. A call to Autodesk's tech support confirmed this. More ram helps with real-time viewport issues, not speeding up rendering time.

actually recently i'm finding max to be increasingly outdated and irrelevant for a lot of my 3d work.

From even the little things like multiple monitor support to much more important features like the already mentioned bad support for older version plugins or that horrendous "brush" push/pull deformation system for high poly modeling (see ZBrush for how it's supposed to work) it seems like a lot of the MAX features are either lacking or tacked on just so they can say ...hey we can do that too.

Also it seems like the software is ballooning and getting more and more complicated as time goes by, because they continue to add new features without dropping support for older features that people should not use anymore.

I can't imagine what a nightmare it must be for a person who's just starting to learn it and has no experience with the previous versions...

So what programs do you use for your 3D? What kind of 3D do you do?

i use maya for 3D .. it is outstanding .. i hope maya 9
is 64 bit vista compatible.
is max 9 vista 64 bit compatible. i saw 64 bit but not which OS.
maybe i am blind ..
maya is great for movies and game developing ...