Is 3ds max Design 2010 Slower Than Previous Versions?

[RyanJ]

Hello all.

We are about to upgrade our global 3ds Max users from Max 9 to Max Design 2010. A colleague of mine recently told me DO NOT do it because apparently the render times have slowed down considerably, up to double the time in some instances! I did a few searches on other sites and there are definitely some grumblings out there about this but I trust this crowd the most. Now, it seems a little crazy to me that this might be true, so, I was hoping that some of you out there may have done some testing on this already? Even comparing Max 2009 to 2010? We are Vray users as well, not sure if that might make a difference or not. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[francosd]

Yes my friend i do al the test, i work in max 2008 in windows xp 32bits

 

and i to wuant to upgrade so since mi hd crash i install windows 7 64 bits an max 2010, the mental ray is faster than ever but vray is to slow to mesure , so i instal windows xp 64 bits n do the same test and the result is that max 2010 and vray is two times slower than max 2008 in 32 bits

[RyanJ]

That's what I was afraid of. Anyone else? Do the new features in 2010 outweigh the decrease in speed?

[BrianKitts]

I've been watching this post waiting to see what the responses are.... I've never had a problem and oddly struck to hear someone had that big of a performance hit jumping to 2010

 

If the product really doubled your rendering time, I think you would have a hoard of people on here screaming bloody hell that it's a horrible product release (similar to the maxwell backlash)

 

2010 brought in a lot of great features... better viewport performance, graphite modeling tools, I love the connection extension..... there's other threads on the forum here if you search you'll find on if the enhancements are worth the jump from 2009 to 2010. What you won't find in those threads is any mention of a rendering time hit going to 2010.....

 

if upgrading to 2010 doubles your render time then I would wager to say that you have some serious other issues that are contributing to the lag in your rendering.

[Ricardo Eloy]

We installed 2010 and everything works just fine (ok, one might hate the ribbon interface...). Mental Ray works really smooth and the viewport improvements alone are, imho, worth the upgrade.

Now, I just remembered one thing from a recent thread: some people complained about really long render times using Max 2010 and VRay... But that's NOT because of Max.

[Jeff Mottle]

If the product really doubled your rendering time, I think you would have a hoard of people on here screaming bloody hell that it's a horrible product release (similar to the maxwell backlash)

 

Yeah, that's what I thought as well.

[RyanJ]

You guys are exactly right. I confirmed with the original source and Max Design 2010 works great with Mental Ray but with Vray it takes double the time (for this one particular person). I'm suspecting possible driver issues etc, but honestly, even a 20% increase in time is horrible. So, maybe this post should be in the Vray forum and not the Max forum? With possibly thousands of Vray users right here on Cg Architect I still find it hard to believe we haven't heard more about this. If it's true, then are users blinded by the new razzle dazzle or is it that they just haven't compared the render times or noticed the slow down? The train has left the station for us and we are upgrading to 2010 and don't get me wrong, I'm really looking forward to it, so maybe the question is whether Vlado and the boys need to do something to Vray to speed it back up before users start going back to the Mental Ray they left behind years ago!?!?!

 

We should be getting our test versions within the next couple of weeks and I'm going to do some time tests myself, on a large animation this could make or break meeting deadlines.

[BrianKitts]

I'm a vray user as well, and no there was no performance hit, if anything it got faster as it typically does with every new release of vray.... they make adjustments that just make the engine better and better. A new application release meant a new release of vray had to come out.

 

That being said, the one thing I could think of that would make your friends rendering slow down is if they jumped from vray 1.47 to 1.5sp3 (at the same time the updated max) and didn't adjust the noise threshold in their rendering settings. When Vray moved to version 1.5 they adjusted that threshold by a power of ten, allowing for smaller decimal numbers in the field. So if you didn't adjust you would be sampling 10 more times than you need to in previous releases which would kill your render time. If that's the case, then your friends failed to read the release notes and its their own fault..... not max.

 

(I'm guesstimating on the last release version before the switch.... if anyone remembers otherwise please chime in)

 

mental ray is catching up, both in speed and in features to vray. Vray is still faster, specially for interiors, and they are doing things to stay ahead of the game. Haven't heard anything about mental starting on a realtime engine yet.

Edited January 21, 2010 by BrianKitts

[Andrew1]

Interesting topic,

 

I'm running at home 64 bit max 2009 on windows 7 64 and the cold boot load time comes to a 28 seconds, now at work they just upgraded to max 2010 64 bit on windows 7 64 on cold boot loading max takes 54 seconds... ???,

the system specs are identical - 2.8 quad core q9550 with 8 gigs of ram actually the one on max 2010 got better ram and it takes twice longer to load, we have been thinking about just staying with max 2009 and see what happens in next year, I have noticed the application being less stable with each new release, I kind of liked working on max 9 - 32 bit , the stability was just wonderful.

any other thoughts ???

what are the great benefits of max 2010 over 2009 for an average user ???

[BrianKitts]

Maybe this page will have a surprise for you then??

 

http://area.autodesk.com/renderingr/iray

 

ahhh touché.... thanks for sharing!

[kenpimentel]

We moved some things into the "load time" in order to make it feel faster on first use. Separately, we are focused on a faster startup effort as part of XBR initiative. We call it "XBR Diet". We want to cut the startup time in half at least.

 

3ds Max 2010 has had lots of favorable reviews and was recently chosen as the best Game art tool. So, somebody seems to like it.

 

Interesting topic,

 

I'm running at home 64 bit max 2009 on windows 7 64 and the cold boot load time comes to a 28 seconds, now at work they just upgraded to max 2010 64 bit on windows 7 64 on cold boot loading max takes 54 seconds... ???,

the system specs are identical - 2.8 quad core q9550 with 8 gigs of ram actually the one on max 2010 got better ram and it takes twice longer to load, we have been thinking about just staying with max 2009 and see what happens in next year, I have noticed the application being less stable with each new release, I kind of liked working on max 9 - 32 bit , the stability was just wonderful.

any other thoughts ???

what are the great benefits of max 2010 over 2009 for an average user ???

[Tommy L]

Ive been on 2010 for about 5 months. Running W7 on an i7, 12 gig ram. It is very stable in MR and Vray. Haven't noticed any render slowdown but I havent done any direct comparison testing and I tend to render on the farm, not on the workstation. Im booting it from a SSD so its a lot quicker than it used to be, but all files are still accessed from a server, so no improvement in opening file time.

Altyogether, I have no complaints about the latest Max or Vray. On the contrary.

[Ricardo Eloy]

I did some search on the subject... I mean, I was kind of bugged by the chance that 2010 could in fact present itself slower than a previous version (it simply does not make sense from a technical/technological point of view). What I found is that no VRay nor Mental Ray registered user has ever complained about speed. Really.

So, probably there's something wrong with your friend's setup (hardware or software wise). Tell him to check with Chaos' support (assuming he is a VRay user) or with Autodesk's (if he's using Mental Ray).

[Koper]

hmmm, XBR Diet?? My max 2010 start up slower than my max 2008, much slower. but thats the only problem i've got, which ain't a real problem, as I've never had to restart max 2010, which in turn IMO is a huge improvement on max.

[dheersreedh]

Hi

 

yes i experienced the slowness of new version max with vray...

 

i thought it is my mistake in some vray setup options...

 

if anybody knows the better setup options of vray in max2010.. please post it

 

regards...

 

Sudheer Sreedharan

 

3D visualizer

Dubai

[Jimy]

In terms of render time we haven't noticed any difference as that is indeed a render engine problem. Howver we use Vray.

 

We regretted moving to 2009 for V9. Slower and buggy as hell. But of course once you open a file in 2009 or 2010 there's no going back (boo Autodesk!)

 

2010 interface seems incredibly slow (viewport), especially on rotating large poly scenes. A lot slower than the previous 2 versions.

 

We are currently waiting for them to get this sorted, as it is obviously critical for workflow as 2010 seems to have some great modeling tools (although this is essentially what polyboost used to be/ is). And of course none of your plugins will work. Because we use many plugins we have to wait for them to bring out 2010 support for these. I don't know whether you have this problem, but it's something to consider.

[RyanJ]

Ok all, I have purchased Max 2010 for home use and have done some time trials on Max 8 vs. Max 2010. I have also had a colleague of mine in Michigan do some time trials on Max 9 vs. Max 2010. On both tests Max 2010 was FASTER. So, that's great news. One thing to note is that different versions of Vray were used because we simply downloaded the latest SP4 Vray when installing it on Max 2010. So, these comparisions are, unfortunately, not apples to apples but I think they're still valid enough to answer the major question here......that being, "Is 3ds Max Design 2010 Slower Than Previous Versions". Here are the results:

 

Max 8 Vray 1.5.SP3a (18min 40.9sec) vs. Max 2010 Vray 1.5.SP4a (17min 21.7sec) = Max 2010 is about 7% faster

 

Max 9 Vray 1.5.RC3 (36min 39.4sec) vs Max 2010 Vray 1.5.SP4a (32min 1.2sec) = Max 2010 is about 13% faster.

 

So, as you can see the percentage varies and I believe that is due to the fact that a really old Vray was being used with the Max 9 test. I would guess if you're keeping up with Vray releases that simply switching to Max 2010 will get you anywhere from a 5% to 7% increase in speed.

 

Below are the test frames with time stamps. I'm going to see if I can download Vray 1.5.SP4a for Max 8 and do a straight comparison at home.

 

So, for any of you still having slower Vray renders with Max 2010 I would guess it is something other than Max. Two of the users with this complaint were on Vista....that could be it. Brian Kitts had a great response pointing out that the noise threshold was changed and if you upgraded from version 1.47 to 1.5SP3 and used an old file then you would get longer render times. Other than that I might suggest updating all your drivers as I did before these tests.

 

Ryan.

[kenpimentel]

2010 interface seems incredibly slow (viewport), especially on rotating large poly scenes. A lot slower than the previous 2 versions.

 

3ds Max 2010 requires more of your GPU than 3ds Max 2009 (or earlier). Even if you didn't change your GPU/driver, you might experience slower results because you've got more capabilities in the viewport than ever before - though you may not be using them. There are also some driver/hw problems out there (for example with nvidia GTX 295) that have a specific problem that required turning off one on the GPUs to get the speed back. In general, all of our viewport tests (using SPECapc in part) show that 3ds Max 2010 is faster in the viewport than 2009. Of course, this is for a specific set of hw/drives which you may not be using.

[Grohu]

I did tests on identical scene with identical settings between 2009 and 2010 both running on 1.5SP4a and noticed pretty much same render times.

There was a issue before SP1 came out for max with bitmap paging which was slowing renders a lot but in SP1 they added a checkbox to it and people stopped complaining.