Best upgrade to increase Render speed in 3dsmax?

Howdy,
Some of my rendering in 3ds max can take +24 hours, especially if theres any nasty raytracing or atmospherics involved.
Iv'e posted on a few 3d forums and have recieved mixed answers as to what would be the best hardware upgrade to increase my rendering speed.
Some have said CPU, some say GFX card, some say RAM.

My system is a 1.1Ghz Athlon with 512 pc133RAM (mboard wont take ddr) and a GF2MX

I dont want to spend more than 500 australian which is around 300 US (I think).

in all honesty ur best off having all 3 of what everyone have said...a better GFX Card...More Ram...and a better CPU...

ur best bet is a high end Athlon XP CPU and 512-1GB of DDR RAM and a new KT333 or KT400 MB...it'll be ur cheapest AND fastest route.....but just for now..ur best off buying a fast Athlon XP CPU and DDR Board and DDR Ram....

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

Agreed =)

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

Best upgrade is Athlon XP (as fast as possinle) w/ KT333 and PC2100 or PC2700 DDR RAM.

If you can afford, go for Dual Athlon MP setup.

Never buy P4 or Xeon for 3ds max. This app loves faster FPU. An Athlon XP 2200+ is equal in this app compared to much more pricier 2.53 GHz P4.

a better GFX Card isn't necessary. Rendering utilizes the CPU and RAM. So you want to focus on those two aspects. But you do NEED a 3d graphics card with opengl support. But you don't need the most expensive card either.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

thats impossible. He needs new RAM, new chip and new motherboard. Possibly a new case too and power supply as well. He's looking at 400 easy.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

I have a new suggestion for you, buy a 256Mb module and save your money
for the "next generation" of hardware.

I don´t think you will see THAT much of an decrease in rendering times if you buy new
components currently on the market, at least not price/performance wise and certainly
not for that amount of money you have, sadly.

You´re saying that you´re using raytraced shadows in combination with volumetrics and
then on top of this you are rendering it all?

That´s just like begging for problems.
As you surely know raytraced shadows and especially mixed with volumetrics is
very demanding and can bring any processor on it´s knees before it knows what hit it.

I suggest you decrease your volumetrics detail and skip the raytaced shadows entirely.
Use the standard shadowmap and set the value for them to 3000-4000.
When you animate things, lot´s of details "disappears" as the eye don´t have the time
to focus on them, this is especially true if you have a focal point in you´re scene (all scenes should
have this ) that draws the attention to it.
Spice all this with a "good" amount of motionblur and voilá, you have a very nice result.

Raytraced shadows/lighs is almost only good if you need to render caustics, "see thru glass" and exact shadows
(which don´t exist in real life).

Also...how many shadowcasting lights do you have in your scene?
Sit down and think thru, do I really need this light to cast shadows, what if I put
this light in this spot and so on...I promise you that you will get splendid results without
raytraced lights and overdetailed volumetrics.
Just because you can set a detail level to, say 1000 does´nt mean you get better results.
Tweak around till you are satisfied.

Hmm, well, that´s it for now. Hope it helped somewhat.

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This has got to be some kind of record!

Google "" 3ds max Backburner ""

You may establish 1,000s of nodes to distribute your renders.