I have 3ds Max5!  :O I know shocking isn’t it. I want to upgrade it to 8. I looked on the auto desk web site and they dont have any upgrades except for the 8 to 9 upgrade. How can I do this? How much does it cost? I would expect to save some money instead of having to buy a brand new version. Please help me.

For a version that old? No - AFAIK there is no upgrade path. Upgrades are I believe limited to the previous 3 versions, the older the version the more it costs to upgrade. Beyond 3 versions you would be effectively buying the current version at the current price.

Additionally, you can’t upgrade to a previous version only to the current version (2009) as that is the only one they sell.

Note. I believe the above is correct but you should contact an authorised reseller for a definitive answer.

Max 4.2 through 2014, Composite 2014.
XP-64 (SP2).
nVidia 9800GTX+ (512MB) (Driver 314.22).
i5-3570K @ 4.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

There is a legacy program:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=7712105&siteID=123112
This may save you something when going to 2009.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: (started with 1.2) 2012, 2013
HP Z210, i7-2600, Win 7 Pro, Quadro 600