So I’m a bit dumbfounded. 3dsmax runs fine on my system. then I trade my 22in 1680xwhatever monitor for a 24in 1920x1200 monitor and running the viewport maximized kills my fps down to .98 even if nothing is in the scene. I run it unmaximized and i get 100+ fps with nothing in the scene. if I switch from directx9 to Opengl, opengl runs no problem, it just doesn’t look as good. is there something I’m missing?

Dell Precision M90
4gig ram
2.66 intel duo
Windows XP sp2
nvidia quadro 3500m

Hmm confusing… How can a monitor affect a programs performance? I didnt think that was possible, and in fact its not.
Are you sure you didnt change your graphicscard as well? :)
And if you changed resolution, have you tried setting it back to the same as it was with the old monitor?
Did you download a new graphics card driver when you got the new monitor?
Im no expert btw :)

XP x64
Max 2008 x64
Intel Xeon E5430 @ 2.66 GHz
16g RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600

I guess this might seem like an obvious thing to some. But only one monitor gets the power (primary monitor)