Optimize and boost Maya or 3ds Max performance

How to optimize and boost Maya or 3ds Max performance?
When I started tutorial about the Interior Modeling in Maya I soon realized that I have to speed up my computer and optimize/configure Maya settings to work well with big scenes. So here's some tips about boost your 3d Software.

Three are the things that control most your 3d user experience (CPU, Memory and Graphics Card) and they all have a thumb of rule "The more expensive they get higher performance they give." - Marketing rule and in some cases it is true. But not anyone has a big company for this investment. Say you are a home user (student) what should you do? You have to find compromise variant to suits your needs but it is not so expensive. Ok let’s say you buy something for gaming purposes and you have mine configuration just for example:
AMD Sempron 2800+ X86 model 8 Stepping 1 works on 2200 MHz
Main board АGP Ashrock K7S8X
Video (Graphics) Card Nvidia GeForce FX 5200
Win XP pro Service pack 2
Total phy memory 767.48MB
Free phy memory 346.91Mb
Max page file 1.83
RAM (Memory) 768MB
First is CPU so you have a very low class CPU what should you do? First thing is overclocking it you may say yes but be careful. When I bought it before 2 years first thing to do was to find nice info about clocking. There are many ways to do it first with hardware (not recommended if you don't know what you are doing or if this computer has your last money from a bank account). So the second is by something called BIOS (control panel of the computer). I've done this and set it to 166 frequencies. So I started Maya try renders but it crushes with no warning just halt. I think maybe this was from version or drivers so I wait for newer versions and make some adjustments but still the same problem. And guess what after one year it still crushes my renders so I realized finally that was this. And I gave the default BIOS options with 100 frequencies and everything worked fine. When realizing this I go to BIOS again and do small boost and check the render and now it works realy nice at 150 frequencies so it is 2200+ MHz not real. The last is over clocking by software and check performances. Well I've don't do this because they ware a lot of advertisement in the software also wanted to pay and etc. Just check my CPU performance with ctrl + alt + Del. Also in Process sections i set priority to below normal to the render (say Mayabatch.exe) and maybe sometimes Maya so if I want to watch a movie or something else you can do it with render turned on cool ;-). The problem was that CPU turns on its prevent functions from destroy and halts or reboots the system. So I wanted a control all of this. I want a program that checks the CPU process for me and when it reaches 80-90% of using to run a blank process or something and to hold the windows and CPU wont use its functions so when a program finish the windows won't crash but continues. I found one but it was with payment (Frost Shield I think was the name). If you know any software for free like this tell me please.
Ok about the memory they are a lot of things. First don't use more than one software to boost performance (just type Ram in download.com). I personally don't use it at all or use one and uninstall it later. Second if you have different memories check in internet are they matching each other if not just use one of it. If you have blue screen it will be caused in most cases by memory crush.

So what we can do to boost memory? Few things actually. First go to Control panel/System/Advanced. Then in Performance/Settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change go to custom size and make this file as bigger as you can. This Virtual memory is when your computer run out of Physical (hardware) memory it makes files in your hard drive is this space you have make and it wont crush also it can be used for operations like copy etc...
Second go to Control panel/System/Advanced/Start up and Recovery. Go to Edit it will open boot.ini found in your local hard disk directory where windows is installed so mine is c:\boot.ini. You can also edit it from there. So it is very simple with new just go and use you extra that Maya gives it to you for free it is "/3GB" you should. Here is mine:

[boot loader]
timeout=16
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /3GB /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
If you want you can write debugging information. Mine is to Small memory dump.
Reference:
www.microsoft.com memory improve

Windows XP SP1 may have problems starting if /3GB is used. See Microsoft knowledgebase article: 328269

Memory improving for Windows

Maya has its own configurations for boost too.
Go to Maya help and read "Get the most out of Maya" to speed your Maya. Set your Undo in Preferences to Finite say 100 in the queue size. If you are using mental ray go to Rendering tab. Set Render/Render current frame/ option box and set your memory or just do automatic. Calculate will use less memory. Do the same in Batch Render option box. You can also do it by going to the Outliner/Uncheck Show DAG objects only and find/ Mental Ray Globals/Memory and Performance settings. Memory limits let say i have 768 i set it to 700mb For very big scenes set the acceleration method to large bsp to prevent mental ray of crushing. It is bit slower but... And last but not least. Shading/Interactive shading option box and choose Bounding Box. So when the objects are still they will be shaded but when you move or manipulate it they will be bounding boxes very useful.

Ok the last thing that doesn't reflect rendering time just the preview viewport performance is Graphics Card. Mine as you see is very low game class - Video (Graphics) Card Nvidiq GeForce FX 5200. So what we can do about it. Well a few things. First was the over clock but why to over clock it when you can use different driver for professional card and then over clock this. So this is what to do if you want your game class Nvidia video card to concentrate the performance in 3d software like Quadro. It won't be exactly the same as Quadro but still... See this web site:
NVWorld.ru SoftMod Quadro
After this go to Riva tuner and in the second panel: Force Ware detected go to customize Overclocking. Enable and move the clock into the end of the safety dark blue zone. If you want you can do it more but I'm scared student so doesn’t want to crush my system... Next go to Control panel/ Nvidia control panel/3d settings/Adjust image settings with preview/Use advanced 3d image settings/Take me there and choose Maya into Global Presets and then Apply. If you're using Max (get MAXtremeD3D) or AutoCAD (get Power Draft) from the Nvida web site you can go and see also other software from there. These are highly optimized for these software drivers. Speeds up like 50% of your performance. For Windows it is very nice to do full scandisk and disk defragment + clean up registry and spyware/viruses once in a while. Also I recommend to have say a little hard disk 20gb with Maya and windows only for rendering and other with all the stuff but not partitions different hard if you use partitions just install two windows and use one for everyday basis other for rendering... Use start/run/msconfig to and disable services and startup you don’t want you can check first hide all Microsoft services then get rid of some of them also. Use Control panel/Administrative Tools/Services and also stop it for run in background mode.

Ok this is all for now. If you have advises give it to me I will share it here I want to type more for 3ds max and ATI graphics but I won't use it at the moment so if anyone knows something....
For more info see also these great resources:
GPU Overclocking
Guru3d overclock resource