I recently purchased a wonderful machine which I was promised would work wonders in 3DS.  My machine is a dual processor (16 core) Xenon (3.3GHZ/processor) an ATI FirePro v8750; 24GB ram @ 1300MHZ; solid state system disc (only 200GB)...running on windows 7 x64

I installed version 8.63 for ATI’s wondercard, and set Direct X on the card and 3DS to 9 (not 10!), and when trying to render heavier scenese, around 20 million vertices + around 2-4 million polygons every third or fourth render at around 1500X1250 pixels, 16-256 sampling, either Mental Ray has a fatal error, or the system slows down to an irritating standstill, even with the scene set to wireframe...I keep sending the error reports to Autodesk, and I keep getting the same fix which does not work.  Do I need to change my video card, or is there another workaround that I am not aware of?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

OG
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
2 X W5590 XEON CPUS @ 3.33GHz (16CPUs)
25MB RAM - ATI FirePro V8750 (FireGL) 2GB
Solid State Kingston HD 120GB

No idea, what the problem might be. But I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with your scene.

Try rendering only portions of it, to narrow it down if there’s is any problem with some geometry or modifier. Only thing I can tell you right now is that your VGA card has absolutely nothing to do with the fact, that your max crashes while rendering. That’s done by the CPU.

Nice specs, btw. Would have gone with nvidia nevertheless. ;)

max 2009/2010 on Windows 7 Professional x64
Quadro FX 570, Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 4Gb Ram