Hardware Requirements


To get good performance from 3ds Max, you need a fairly meaty machine. A good default system to use is a Pentium-IV or an AMD Athlon-based computer with 1GB or more of RAM (and 2 GB of swap space) and a decent-sized hard drive and monitor. If need be, you can get by with a 500 MHz Pentium III (or AMD) packing as little as 512MB of RAM (with 500MB swap space), but you may spend lots of time watching your computer churn furiously to keep up. A dual Intel Xeon, a dual AMD Athlon, or a 32-bit Opteron system is recommended.

Note 

Max under Windows 2000 or XP can take advantage of multiprocessor machines.

3ds Max has been compiled to run on both 32-bit and 64-bit computers. If you select to use a 64-bit system, Max will be able to deal with dramatically larger data sets.

NEW FEATURE 

A 64-bit version is new to 3ds Max 9.

One element of your system that will probably have the greatest impact on the performance of 3ds Max is the graphics card. Any good graphics card has specialized hardware that will take much of the workload off your computer's CPU, freeing it up to do other tasks. 3ds Max is very graphics-intensive, and a little extra money in the graphics card department will go a long way toward boosting your performance.

The good news is that hardware accelerated graphics cards are becoming cheaper: You can get great cards for $200–$300. When searching for a graphics card, make sure that it can support a resolution of at least 1024×768 at 16-bit color with 3D graphics acceleration including support for OpenGL and/or DirectX 9.0c. You'll also want a minimum of 64MB on the graphics card, but look for cards with at least 256MB or more for 3D graphics acceleration. You can use some of the graphics boards built to run computer games; however, be aware that some boards claim to support OpenGL but actually support only a subset of it. Before going out to make your purchase, visit the Autodesk Web site (http://www.autodesk.com/3dsmax) to see performance metrics for various popular graphics cards.

For the complete installation, you need 650MB of hard drive space. You can get by with less if you choose the Compact installation option. Another handy piece of hardware to have is a scrollable mouse. A scrollable mouse makes moving through menus and the Command Panel easier, and it gives you a third button, which can be used to navigate the viewports. Max also supports graphics tablets.




3ds Max 9 Bible
3ds Max 9 Bible
ISBN: 0470100893
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 383

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